Inclement Weather, Diseases, Etc. 273 



The necessity of storing up these mats during the 

 time they are not in use, requires that light sheds should 

 be set up, here and there through the vineyards, to serve 

 that purpose. A mat sixty-five feet long, and thirty- 

 two inches wide, has a diameter of twenty-four inches. 

 There must be about one hundred and fifty feet of this 

 matting to fill up a cubic yard. Therefore, the eight 

 thousand one hundred and twelve feet of matting re- 

 quired to cover an acre, being divided by one hundred 

 and fifty, we see that to shelter the mats of a single 

 acre, requires a shed of the capacity of about fifty-four 

 cubic yards — that is to say, having a surface of twenty 

 square yards, and a hight of eight feet. 



Further on we give the yearly cost of matting per 

 acre, and point out the circumstances under which its 

 use will be profitable. 



Summer Colds. — It is not necessary that the thermom- 

 eter should fall below the freezing point, for the grow- 

 ing vine to suffer from cold. A marked fall of tem- 

 perature, though insufficient to produce frost, often 

 brings about results quite as bad as frost itself. 



If the temperature falls for a few days at the mo- 

 ment of the first development of the bunches, there 

 will be a suspension in the circulation of the sap, and 

 in the growth of the vine. The elementary buds which 

 the bunches bear will miscarry for want of nourishing 

 juices ; the pedicles bearing these young buds stretch 

 out, and the bunch is transformed into a tendril. Vine- 

 dressers, in such cases, say that the bunches have "run" 

 (blighted), 



[We have become convinced, by long observation, that these 

 sudden depressions of temperature are often disastrous in their 



