78 Allen^s Treatise on the Grape. 



crops, or more delicious fruit, than those made without them. 

 In this opinion we were fully sustained by subsequent articles 

 in the foreign journals, one of which, by Dr. Lindley, we pub- 

 lished in our last volume, (XIV. p. 49,) with some prefatory 

 remarks. But Mr. Allen seems to entertain the opinion, that 

 our denunciation of quackery had reference to his views on 

 the subject, and hence the fifty pages of extracts and remarks, 

 to sustain the advice which he gave in the first edition of his 

 volume. He has had up-hill work of it, and we shall not fol- 

 low him through it. Our object is briefly to show, that a 

 border, made with a layer of dead carcasses at the bottom, is a 

 practise not only condemned by the most successful grape- 

 growers in England — but an expensive and troublesome sys- 

 tem — offensive in execution — and not attended with as suc- 

 cessful results as the use of materials always at hand — viz — 

 good loam and stable manure. 



Mr. Allen, after the quotation of the two entire articles of 

 ours, before alluded to, endeavors to show that we not only 

 used materials which came within our denimciation of 

 quackery^ but that our border was made unusually rich by top- 

 dressings of guano and manure. We never denied that a 

 border should not be rich. But we did and do assert, that a 

 border should not be made almost entirely of a mass of putri- 

 fying substances, over-stimulating the vine at first, to its great 

 injury afterwards. As to ground bones, which we recom- 

 mended to be mixed with the loam and manure, Mr. Allen 

 would not certainly class them with such substances as dead 

 horses, dogs, &c. Under the term of quackery^ we denomi- 

 nate the mixture of nearly all of the substances which have 

 been mentioned, and which are yearly recommended by some 

 cultivators ; the moderate use of any one or two of them, ex- 

 cept the carrion, would not come under that name. All, we 

 believe, so understood the meaning of the word quackery, 

 which Mr. Allen seems to have made the text for his long 

 chapter on manures. 



But, has Mr. Allen convinced us that borders, made of carri- 

 on, are better than such as we have recommended ? Has he 

 himself produced as fine grapes as others who use none of the 

 dead carcasses? Far from it. His numerous pages of ex- 

 tracts not only fully sustain our views, but they show that 



