MILDEW ON GRAPES. 



197 



wretched course of cultivation, annually deteriorating 

 in value and productiveness. It is a very poor plan in 

 farmers to wear out and impoverish what land they 

 have, because they can buy more : better raise a few 

 acres to the height of fertility, place it in perfect order, 

 and then, if there is auy surplus capital, after attend- 

 ing to the moral and intellectual wants of the family, 

 it may be expended in more lands to be gradually 

 brought to the same state. 



MILDEW ON GRAPES. 



A. J. Downing, a good authority, states, in the Hor- 

 ticultural Magazine, that foreign grapes, as the Sweet- 

 water, Chasselas, &c. may be preserved from mildew, 

 by securing an annual succession of new plants, which 

 is effected with very little trouble, by laying a thrifty 

 shoot of the old vine in June, of some five to eight 

 feet in length, which takes root and produces fruit for 

 one or two seasons, not subject to mildew. The layer 

 is separated the next season, and the old plant dug up 

 and thrown away. It is a common remark, that the 

 foreign grape will be free from mildew one or two 

 seasons after it comes into bearing, but that it is after- 

 wards subject to mildew. The cause has not been 

 satisfactorily explained. The finest vine of a foreign 

 grape which we ever saw grew in the garden of the 

 late Judge Scott, of Catskill. We saw it, several suc- 

 cessive years, when the fruit was at maturity, and it 

 had no appearance of mildew. This exemption from 

 mildew the judge ascribed to the circumstance of his 

 having placed a large flat stone in the bottom of the 

 hole before planting his vine, and which prevented the 

 roots from penetrating the subsoil, the conjectural 

 cause of the mildew. — Albany Cultivator, 



