March:, 1865.] 



JOtTRNAL OF HOEriOULTUEE AND COTTAGE GARDENEE. 



191 



which serves them as a ploughshare. See, too ! on the backs 

 of the patient kine, and clustering around their feet, are 

 other sable attendants ; sable they look from hence, but if 

 we were close we should find them adorned with the richest 

 steely purple and blue- green reflections. With what business- 

 like earnestness each searches among the hair of the cow 

 he has selected to patronise, digging for bots and ticks ; or 

 walks round and round, with the ivory white eye turned up, 

 scrutinising the grazing beast beneath, and now and then 

 springing upward to seize the insect prey. Away goes one, 

 the boat-shaped tail folded on itself, with a sharp metallic 

 cry, which reminds you of the smitings of a smith upon 

 his anvil. Prom this sound we call the familiar bird the 

 Tinkling. 



" As we proceed we hear the low sweet oooings gf hundreds 

 of Doves of various species coming from the woods. These 

 soxinds are eminently characteristic of the early day in these 

 wooded slopes. The loud and vehement call of the White- 

 winged Turtle-dove, 'Two bits for two!' is pertinaciously 

 uttered; or now and again exchanged for its stammering 

 cry of eight notes, of which the last is protracted with a 

 moaning fall. The Pea-dove shows its plump form of pur- 

 plish fawn colour, and its large melting gazelle eye, on the 

 road before us, dusting itself almost under our horse's feet, 

 or sits in the shadow of the groves, and coos, ' Sary coat 

 true-blue ! ' And Ground-doves, no larger than span'ows, 

 congregate in small flocks on the pasture-lands, searching 

 for seeds of grass and weeds, and shout 'Meho ! meho !' or 

 a loud and hoUow ' Whoop !' " 



'■ Look at this ancient SOk-cotton tree ! what a fine object 

 is it, illumined in the morning sun ! The enormous per- 

 pendicular spurs stand out like radiating walls from the 

 huge trunk, looking almost as white as mai-ble in the bright 

 light, :ind thi-owing the recesses into dark shadow. Trace 

 up the vast pillar-like trunk ! the eye wanders up a hundred 

 feet before it detects a branch to break the uniformity of its 

 column ; there the huge boughs spread horizontally, each 

 one a vast tree for bulk and extent. What an aspect of 

 strength in those contorted and gnarled Hmbs ! How far 

 away they carry the umbrageous canopy of foliage ! And 

 see, too, what a microcosm is such a tree as this ! The 

 hoary trunk is studded at intervals with tufts of parasitic 

 plants of the Pine- Apple tribe ; these are called Wild-pines ; 

 they do not bear eatable fruit, but their blossoms are often 

 of great splendour. There is one now in flower : from a tuft 

 of rigid arching leaves, which form sheathing cylinders at 

 the base, springs a fine spike of closely-set flowers, of the 

 richest purple and crimson dyes. Another kind has the 

 sheathing leaves more compactly overlapping in a sort of 

 herring-bone or zigzag fashion, whence projects a longer, 

 looser, and more branched raceme of scarlet and yellow 

 blossoms. There are many not now in flower, for they vary 

 in their season of blooming, but the leaves show that they 

 differ in species, though they possess a general family re- 

 semblance. One sort, common enough, is not at all orna- 

 mental. The negroes call it " Old Man's Beard ;" the stems 

 are very long, and as slender as wire, which form great 

 ragged pendulous tufts, of a dull hoary grey hue. 



" And there, in the forks of the huge limbs, grow enor- 

 mous matted masses of various vegetation, too remote from 

 our eyes to be identified in detail ; but we discern bunches 

 of Orchideous blooms hanging in the airj and feathery Perns 

 arching out their elegant tracery ; and creepers running 

 along the boughs, and what look like tussocks of wiry grass 

 at intervals, but which are small tiny-flowered Orchids, and 

 long, long ends of green twine hanging many yards in 

 length, now looped up in a loose bight, now swinging in the 

 wind in mid-air, now almost touching the earth, and dividing 

 at their extremities into three or four smaller threads." 



A Practical Treatise on the Grape Yuie. By William Thom- 

 son. W. Blackwood & Sons, London and Edinburgh. 

 In the short space of three years Mr. Thomson's admirable 

 treatise on the cultivation of the Grape Vine has passed 

 through four editions. Such an event is not to be wondered 

 at, when we consider the experience of the author and the 

 way in which he has, through these pages, communicated 

 that experience to others. No better test of the appreciation 



in which the work is held can possibly be furnished than 

 the appearance of the fom'th edition, which contains some 

 new matter that has suggested itself to the author since the 

 last edition was published. We observe there are two new 

 chapters — one on " Scalding," and the other on " Stocks for 

 Tender Vines," which, as it is a subject that has been much 

 agitated of late, we will transcribe : — 



" Those who have paid most attention to the subject have 

 come to the conclusion that many of the highest flavoured 

 of our Grapes, which are at the same time the most delicate 

 and difficult to gi-ow with success on their own roots, will 

 one day be grown with perfect ease when we have discovered 

 the proper stocks forthem, and that late-ripening varieties will 

 be got to ripen earlier when grafted on earlier stocks. I have 

 not myself proved the correctness of the latter, but have 

 ; read of instances of it, and, reasoning from analogy, am pre- 

 \ pared to believe it. Of the former I had a striking proof in the 

 j case of the Muscat Hamburgh on the Black Hamburgh stock. 

 j On its own roots I have not grown it above 2 lbs. weight, 

 j while on the Hambui-gh stocks I have had it 5 lbs. weight, 

 I with larger berries and much better finished in every way 

 than on its own roots. I have proved the Black Barbarossa 

 to be a most unsuitable stock for the Bowood Muscat, so 

 much so that the fruit never ripened at all on it, while by 

 its side the Bowood Muscat ripened perfectly on its own 

 roots. The importance of this experiment lay in the proof it 

 gave that a late stock procrastinated the ripening of the 

 variety grown on it ; from which one is led to infer that an 

 early stock, like Sweetwater or Chasselas Musque, would 

 facilitate the ripening of late sorts inarched on them. Of the 

 excellence of the Black Hamburgh as a stock for such high- 

 flavoured though delicate Grapes as Muscat Hamburgh, and 

 the whole of the Prontignans, I have not the slightest doubt ; 

 and I have during last summer inarched these sorts and 

 many others on it, and recommend others to do the same, 

 feeling confident that success wiU be the result." 



At page 2S we find the following valuable hints : — 

 " I can strongly recommend the following method of 

 planting and treating young Vines, from my own experience 

 of it in the past season. It is probably in its details new, 

 but it only requires to be described to commend itself to all 

 who have any knowledge of such matters. I had a large 

 house to plant, chiefly with Muscats, in April, 1864. I had 

 a stock of one-year-old plants in eight-inch pots by me ; I cut 

 the rods back to 4 feet in February, and allowed them to 

 stand in a cold Peach-house till the 13th of April, when the 

 border was ready for their being planted ; I shook all the 

 earth from their roots, and spread them out on the soil of 

 the border, one Vine to each rafter, and 5 feet apart, 

 covered the roots with 6 inches of soil, and gave the whole 

 a good watering, with water at a temperature of 150°, and 

 covered the surface with an inch of dry soU to prevent, to 

 some extent, the escape of the heat communicated to the 

 border by the warm water. The Vines were just bursting 

 their buds when planted, and instead of adopting the usual 

 practice of stopping or rubbing off all the buds but one or 

 two, I allowed all to grow, and tied them carefully to the 

 wires ; by this means I had in some instances ten rods to one 

 Vine, all of which have, during the season, run to the top 

 of the house, and partly down the back wall, a distance of 

 30 feet, and many of these rods are as strong as ever I had 

 previously seen a single rod from a Vine the first year it was 

 planted. At this date (6th January, 1865) they are not yet 

 cut down, and the whole house is a perfect thicket of wood. 

 I will shortly cut back all these Vines to within a foot of the 

 fr-ont sashes, and train up two rods from each this season, for 

 fruiting in 1866 ; and I need not tell those who know that a 

 plant makes roots in proportion to its leaves, that Vines 

 treated as I have described will have an enormous excess of 

 roots formed in the border, as compared with others treated 

 on the one-rod and pinching system, and that the bearing- 

 rods they will make this year will be in proportion to the 

 extent and vigour of their roots in the soU. I have just 

 measured one of them that, when planted in April, was 

 not thicker than a writing-quill, and I find that it is now 

 3i inches in circumference, and has ten rods perfectly ripe to 

 the top of the rafters, a distance of 21 feet. If, instead of 

 permanent vigour and productiveness, an immediate return 

 were the object aimed at, I have no hesitation in say- 



