364 Coiling System of Vine Culture. 



trial ; and accordingly, putting up a bed of dung and old leaves, 

 I plunged the pots partially into it in the beginning of December, 

 increasing the temperature by plunging deeper, &c., until from 

 60°, at the end of the third week, the bottom heat ranged from 

 85° to 95° : the atmospheric temperature of the pit ranging 

 from 45° to 60". I was well aware that the success would wholly 

 depend upon getting the wood in the pot stimulated into action 

 previously to the developement of the buds, so that when that 

 took place there might be roots formed to support them ; and 

 had succeeded so far, that, by the time the buds were expanding, 

 the plants, which I examined, exhibited a dense mass of spongioles 

 protruding from the wood, in contact with the sides of the pot. 

 In the second week of January, I removed those on which the 

 embryo fruit could be detected into another house, where they 

 were more exposed to the light, the temperature of which ranged 

 from 65° to 75°. Here, although they looked well for a short 

 time, the bunches gradually shriveled up ; so that, to cut the story 

 short, I experienced a complete failure. The atmosphere of 

 London might, to a certain extent, be instrumental in producing 

 such a result, especially as, at the period alluded to, there were 

 a few very foggy days, so dense, indeed, that one person could 

 not recognise another a few paces distant. But the appearance 

 of the plants did not indicate that this was so much the cause of 

 failure, as that it arose from a want of a supply of proper nou- 

 rishment. Every one who has paid any attention to vegetable 

 phenomena must have taken notice of the capabilities of plants 

 to accommodate themselves, to a certain extent, to peculiar cir- 

 cumstances; and that some possess this power to such an extent, 

 that the vital principle will give evidence of its indestructibility 

 when the branches are plunged in the earth and the roots waving 

 in the breeze ; the former in course of time protruding roots, 

 and the latter buds and branches. But, although aware of such 

 a fact, we do not thence infer that branches and roots are the 

 same in construction, or that hence, even in climbing plants, as 

 the vine, the roots emitted from the shoots are immediately 

 capable of performing the same office as the regularly constituted 

 established roots of the plant. In examining the pots, I found 

 that the roots consisted of large spongioles, different in nothing 

 but their size from those which break out upon the wood in a 

 vinery ; and as, at the time of the failure, few or no fibres were 

 protruded from these main spongioles, I consider that this will 

 operate against the utility of the system, inasmuch as the fluids 

 absorbed from the soil will be immediately transferred to what 

 was formerly the stem in a very crude, undigested state, from not 

 having passed through those different parts in a regularly con- 

 stituted plant, all of which we have reason to believe exert an 

 influence upon the properties of the sap, previously to its re- 

 ceiving its final elaboration in the leaves ; and this I feel more 



