PREFACE. 



There is not, that I am aware of, any work extant in the 

 English language, that exclusively treats of the vine, except the 

 " Treatise on the Culture of the Vine,'''' written by Speechly, in 

 the year 1789. That work, however, though undoubtedly a val- 

 uable one, and showing on the part of the author a thorough 

 practical knowledge of the nature of the vine, in reference to its 

 culture under glass, is yet not sufficiently full nor explicit with 

 regard to the management of that plant, when cultivated on open 

 walls. Hence the principal reason of the appearance of this 

 volume. 



In compiling it, I have endeavored, in as plain and as concise 

 a manner as the nature of the subject would admit, to embody all 

 the necessary points of culture, with the principles on which they 

 are founded, and also to arrange them in such a manner as to 

 make their practical application a matter of easy attainment. I 

 have also excluded everything of a technical nature, and have, in 

 many instances, not scrupled to use a phraseology different from 

 that usually employed by writers on horticulture. In adopting 

 this course, my object has been to render the work more generally 

 useful, and especially so to the more humble part of the rural 

 population, by enabling them to avail themselves without difficul- 

 ty of the directions contained in it, and thereby the more readily 

 to induce them to turn their attention to the cultivation of a plant 

 which is capable of adding to their comforts and increasing their 

 enjoyments in a much greater degree than has been hitherto sup- 

 posed. 



