140 Coiling System of cultivating the Vine. 



larger pot or box. The pot or box is in either case soon 

 filled with young vigorous fibres, like a hatch of young maggots, 

 each eager for food, and consequently sending it up in abun- 

 dance to supply the crop above. Can there be a doubt but that 

 this is a far superior mode to keeping pots, or even fruit-tree 

 borders, filled up with old inert roots ? 



Before my bunches are clearly developed, I have thousands 

 of eager mouths or spongioles, extending along the coiled shoot, 

 and each gaping for food ; some of these rootlets are 3 ft. long, 

 and, before the vines are out of blossom, many of them are 6 ft. 

 in length, and matted round and round the pot. You will 

 easily understand, from this, how important it is to supply vines 

 so treated with liquid manure, either by watering from above, or 

 by a supply from a saucer or feeder from below. 



I am, Sir, yours, &c. 

 Welbeck Gardens, Jan. 17. 1834. John Mearns. 



Since we received the above account from Mr. Mearns, we have heard the 

 article on the same subject, to which he alludes, read before a meeting of the 

 Horticultural Society. In this paper, the names of a number of varieties are 

 mentioned, which had been thus fruited; including the muscadines, black 

 clusters, black Hamburgh, black Damascus, black Tripoli, muscat of Alex- 

 andria, &c. Mr. Mearns also mentions that, hearing of a new and fine variety 

 of muscat, called the Candia, which had been a few years ago introduced 

 into the Duke of Buccleugh's gardens at Dalkeith, he wrote last autumn to 

 Mr. Macdonald, the gardener there, for some of the primings of this vine, 

 and that he had, at the time the paper was written (Feb., 1834), plants of the 

 Candia at Welbeck, from coils of the prunings received, with numerous bunches 

 of fruit on them, which would ripen in April and May next. 



We regard this discovery of Mr. Mearns as one of considerable importance, 

 not only as showing what may be done in the particular case of the vine, but 

 as tending to familiarise practical gardeners with some points in vegetable phy- 

 siology. It is clear that the coiled shoot is a reservoir of nutriment to the 

 young growth ; in the same manner as the tuber of the potato is an accu- 

 mulation of nutriment for the young shoots which proceed from its buds or 

 eyes when planted. To a certain extent, long shoots of any tree whatever, if 

 buried in the soil, either coiled or extended, and two or three inches or feet of 

 their upper extremities kept out of the ground, would produce leaves, blos- 

 soms, and even fruit, the first year : but those shoots which, from their nature, 

 do not freely emit fibres, or do not emit them at all, would perhaps not set 

 their fruit; or might even cease to produce leaves in the course of a few 

 months. The reason, in that case, would be, that the reservoir of nourishment 

 soon becomes exhausted, if it is not supplied from the soil ; and that the only 

 mode by which the shoot can obtain nourishment from the soil is by means of 

 fibres, which it has either no power of producing at all, or cannot produce in 

 sufficient abundance. The advantages of the coiling system are, that an almost 

 unlimited number of fibres or mouths are produced by it in a very limited 

 portion of soil; and that this soil can be rendered of the most suitable de- 

 scription for the given plant, supplied abundantly with liquid manure, and 

 renewed almost at pleasure. The use of cutting off all these fibres or mouths, 

 when they get too long, is merely to keep them within a limited space ; for 

 when a fibre elongates, unless it has, at the same time, room to branch out, 

 so as to produce other fibrils, it can take in no more nourishment than when 



