DISEASES. 149 
there has not been anything in grape culture that .as ex- 
tited more discussion than this disease, and the most 
eminent and best cultivators have come to diametrically 
opposite conclusions, according as it has shown itself to 
their individual observation. In some houses this is thu 
greatest bugbear that the grape grower has to encounter; 
for after the anxiety of the season appears to be past, and 
he is looking with pleasing satisfaction on his success, his 
hopes are suddenly blighted by the instantaneous appear- 
ance of this pest. His ercp is just arriving at maturity. 
the berries are fast coloring, well swelled up, and to al] 
appearance safe, when upon close examination, they are 
found to have beeome flaccid, the footstalks cf the —_ 
or a part of the stems of the bunches are turned brown 
and withered, in consequence of which the fruit receives 
no more nourishment, the carbonizing action is arrested, 
and the affected berries remain intensely sour. One 
ing that his borders are not well drained, and the roots 
paitly rotted, and seeing no other cause, comes, and with 
reason, to the conclusion that it is the effect of this, and 
in his honest belief heralds his opinion to the world; an 
other takes an opposite inference, for his borders are teo 
dry ; a third discovers that his house is badly constiucted 
as regards the means of ventilation, or that it is situated 
too ii, mania a stagnant, or unwholesome damp at- 
: a fourth states as positively that the keeping 
of the heais led tio late late in the morning, and the sun’s 
rays striking directly upon the wet or damp footstalks 
produces the disease ; a fifth, that it arises from extremes 
of heat between the roots and the tops; a satis that ae 
den changes of temperature in the h % 
in this way we might go on enumerating opinions a 
img the nuisance. It is a common saying that,“when _ 
doctors disagree, who is to decide ;” a very sensible ques 
