THE ILLINOIS FA^HISIER. 



187 



A Cold Grapery and Grape Culture. 

 Large sums of money have been ex- 

 pended and continue to be expended 

 every year for grape plants, vrithout 

 producing any reasonable returns. The 

 culture of f^rapes in the open ground is 

 a simple and cheap process, all of which 

 can be comprised within a few lines. Se- 

 lect a dry soil with a free exposure to 

 the sun ; cultivate deep and thoroughly, 

 set the plants from four to five feet 

 apart, and tie up to stakes, protect them 

 in winter by laying down, covering with 

 earth, boards, straw or litter, cut out 

 the old bearing wood and permit the 

 requisite shoots for next year's bearing, 

 says two shoots to grow, and pinch or 

 cut out the remainder. This is all sim- 

 ple, say you, but we want to train them 

 on a trellis ; very well, do so if you 

 please, but recollect that the wood of 

 the grape vine, like the canes of the 

 raspberry, never bear a second crop of 

 fruit, and while a portion of the wood 

 is in bearing, another portion must be 

 permitted to grow for the next crop, 

 when the old wood must be cut away. 

 In training over an arbor, the spur sys- 

 tem must be adopted, that is, a shoot 



may grow from the base of the side 

 shoots or bearing wood, this will supply 

 a spur or short shoot upon which the 

 next crop will grow as the old spur must 

 be cut away. 



The whole secret of grape pruning 

 rests upon this renewal of the vine, or 

 of fruit bearing wood. In the case of 

 raspberry the old cane dies out, not so 

 of the grape, it lives but to draw from 

 the vine what should go to produce 

 fruit. The Isabella and Catawba grape 

 needs protection north of the Big Muddy 

 river, and though the vines may not be 

 killed outright, yet, by exposure they 

 are so weakened that they do not fruit 

 to advantage, therefore, we urge in all 

 cases, to protect these, and in fact, all 

 other fine grapes, the Clinton, Diana, 

 etc., need <;overing in winter. 



A COLD GKAPERY. • 



The first cold grapery, so far as we 

 know, was erected in Chicago, in the 

 spring of 1857, by John C. Ure, gar- 

 dener to the Hon. I. N. Arnold. The 

 plants were not Bot until June, yet they 

 have made a remarkable growth and re- 

 turn of' fruit. This house is a lean-to 

 against the carriage house, is twenty- 

 five feet long, fourteen wide, six feet in 

 front, and fourteen feet high in the 

 rear. Twenty-four vines were set, half 

 of which were intended to be taken out 

 when the house becomes crowded, btit 

 by cutting back, this point is not yet 



reached, and they are to be left another 

 year. The walls and roof are heavily 

 festooned with great luscious bunches of 

 ripe fruit upon which we feasted our 

 eyes, and then our corporal man ; would 

 that our readers could have had the eye 

 feast at least that they could appreciate 

 its value. 



This structure cost but little and re 

 quires but little care. The varieties are 

 131ack Hamburgli, Zinfindel, Wilmott's 

 Black Hamburgh, Muscat of Alexan- 

 dria, Purple Constantiue, Black Prince, 

 Heine de Nice, Golden Chasselas, Griz- 

 zly Fontignon, Royal Muscadine, To- 

 kay and Chasselas Mosque. 



So well was Mr. A. pleased with this 

 first effort that he had a second house 

 ereeted in the spring of 1858. This 

 house is fifty-one by sixteen feet, four 

 feet high at the front and eighteen in the 

 rear. At our visit, some weeks since, 

 the vines were loaded. By putting up 

 fixed sash with ventilators at the back 

 and front, a large amount is saved in 

 the cost of the house. To one not ac- 

 customed to this style of growing grapes 

 it is a matter of astonishment, what a 

 large amount can be grown in so small 

 a space. 



Since Mr. Ure has demonstrated the 

 cold vinnery, a large number of others 

 have been erected in various parts of the 

 city, and in a few years we will see the 

 Chicago market supplied with Black 

 Hamburgh and Other fine grapes grown 

 under glass, in the chilly fitful climate 

 of old Michigan. To the enterprise of 

 Mr. Arnold, the perseverance and skill 

 of Mr. Ure, is due the credit of first set- 

 ting this ball in motion. Success to 

 them, and- may they live to see every 

 suburban residence and every farm 

 house with its cold grapery, a state of 

 things that we deem not impossible and 

 to a large extent, very profitable. 



said is without the shadow or authority. 

 Mr. Case's idea of the number and ex- 

 tent of Mr. Brown's infringements, 

 seems *to be no small one, as the de- 

 claration above referred to, claims dama- 

 ges to the amount of a Hundred and 

 fiftv thousand dollars. If Mr. Brown's 

 business has been at all proportionate to 

 Mr. Case's claim, this suit and its re- 

 sult must be of interest to a large num- 

 ber of farmers, who having purchased 

 and used the forbidden fruit in which 

 Brown has been dealing, have become 

 alike liable with him to the owner of the 

 patent. — Press and Tribune. 



*•»- 



legal Intelligence. 



Important Suit. — Among the suits 

 brought at the present term of the Cir- 

 cuit Court of the United States for this 

 District, is one which is not merely im- 

 portant to the parties themselves, but 

 possesses an interest for no inconsidera- 

 ble portion of the community. 



The suit we allude to, is that of Jar- 

 vis Case against George W. Brown, of 

 Galesburg, the subject of it being an 

 alleged infringement by the latter of a 

 patent belonging to the former for an 

 improvement in corn planters. Mr, Case 

 (as his declaration of file informs us,) 

 claims that the contrivance in the plant- 

 ers manufactured by Mr. Brown, known 

 as the double drop, is (at least in the 

 manner in which it is applied by Mr. 

 Brown) purely an invention of his own, 

 covered by a patent issued to hira seve- 

 ral years ago, and that Mr. Brown's 

 appropriation of it in the machines afore- 



The Dying of the Mount 



Professor Tyndall's " Glaciers of the 

 Alps," Rev. T. Starr King's "White 

 Hills, their Legend, Landscape and 

 Poetry,'' and Ruskin Passim^ would 

 agree lovingly on the same shelf, and 

 would be capital company when taken 

 thence. 



Talking pleasantly of the uses of 

 mountains, Mr. King quotes Ruskin, to 

 the effect that they cause perpetual 

 changes in the soils of the earth: " the 

 physical geographers assure us that if 

 the whole matter of the Alps were shov- 

 eled out over Europe, the level of the 

 continent would be raised about twenty 

 feet. And this process is actually going 

 on. By a calculation, which he made 

 in the valley of Chamouni, Mr. Ruskin 

 believes that one of the insignificant 

 runlets, only four inches wide and four 

 inches deep, carries down Mont Blanc 

 eighty tons of granito dust a year, at 

 which rate of theft at least 80,000 tons 

 of the substance of that mountain must 

 be yearly transformed into drift sand 

 by the streams, and distributed upon the 

 plains below. . ;: : 



On Whiteface mountain, of the Sand- 

 wich group, a slide took place in 1020, 

 which hurled down huge blocks of gran- 

 ite, sienite, quartz, feldspar and trap- 

 rocks, and cut a deep ravine in the sides 

 of the mountain, several miles in extent. 

 But compensation was made in part for 

 its destructive fury. An extensive 

 meadow at its base, which had borne 

 only wild, coarse grasses, was rendered 

 more fertile by the fine sediment, here 

 and there four feet in depth, that was 

 distributed upon it, and now produces 

 excellent grass and white clover. Take 

 a century or two into account, and we 

 find the mountains fertilizing the soil by 

 the minerals they restore to it to com- 

 pensate the wastes of the harvests. Tne 

 hills, which, as compared with living 

 beings, seem everlasting, are in truth, 

 as perishing as they. Its veins of flow- 



g fountains weary the mountain heart 



^ the crimson pulse does ours ; the 



natural force of the iron crag is abated 



i n its appointed time, like the strength 



of the sinews in a human old age ; and 



J 



