"26 SPREAD OF THE VINE. 



try the loftiest poplars, oaks, elms, and other lords of the 

 woods are overtopped by their twining branches, and in many 

 instances trees are wholly covered by them. Speechly tells us 

 of a vine which, in 1789 was growing in the open air, trained 

 against a row of houses in North allerton, Yorkshire, and which 

 formerly covered a space of one hundred and thirty-seven 

 square yarcls, having existed (in 1789) above 150 years, and 

 that it was judged it would have extended, if permitted, to 

 three or four times that space. The circumference of the 

 stem of this .vine, which died recently, was at a short distance 

 from the ground three feet eleven inches. 



The vine planted by Mr. Eden, at Valentine House, in Es- 

 sex, (England) in 1758, which is the Black Hamburgh, and 

 the parent of the vine at Hampton-court, has a stem nineteen 

 inches in girth, and has extended itself to upwards of two hun- 

 dred feet in length, and covers above one hundred and forty- 

 seven yards. This vine is said, at remote periods, never to 

 have produced less than three hundred weight of fruit annu- 

 ally, and sometimes four hundred and a quarter. The ave- 

 rage profit was not less than eighty pounds sterling annually, 

 when the grapes ripened in June ; but afterwards when the 

 hot house was kept warmer, so that they ripened in March, 

 the crop is supposed to have been frequently worth 300/. per 

 annum. The soil in which it grows is a light, loose, brownish 

 mould, about two feet in depth, on a bottom of loose sand and 

 coarse gravel ; and it is probably from this soil being less 

 congenial to it, and its receiving less attention, that it has been 

 surpassed by its offspring at Hampton Court. It however 

 continues so productive, that it produced two thousand ripe 

 bunches in 1819. 



The celebrated vine at Hampton Court, which was planted 

 in 1769, has a stem thirteen inches in girth, and a principal 

 branch one hundred and fourteen feet in length, the whole vine 

 occupying above one hundred and sixteen square yards, and 

 in one year produced two thousand two hundred bunches of 

 fruit, each weighing on an average a pound in all, about a 

 ton. 



