XII MANNERS AND CUSTOMS 325 



completely to one horizontal arm, according to my 

 instructions, and then fed it twice a week with 

 liquid manure. The growth was so great that at 

 Christmas in the same year he had not only 213 

 feet of strong new wood trained under the glass, 

 but had also actually cut away of new wood (much 

 of these being secondary laterals), as too much for 

 his room, no less than 291 feet. The plant had thus 

 made 168 yards of new growth in 9 months ! The 

 trained shoots, after judicious thinning of the buds, 

 produced 416 fine blooms between Christmas and 

 April ; there ought to have been more, but several 

 of the shoots had, owing to the exigencies of the 

 space, to be trained for a short distance perpendi- 

 cularly, and they only broke into flowering shoots 

 when laid horizontally. 



All was cut away again in April, 1904, to the old 

 horizontal arm, and 11 shoots from it, most of them 

 as thick for a considerable distance as one of my 

 fingers were allowed to grow. These shoots I took 

 the pains to measure and they were aggregated over 

 227 feet, and were still growing fast. 



In this mode of culture under glass mildew is the 

 principal trouble, and the ventilators should be kept 

 entirely shut when the wind is cold. The variety 

 has another piece of bad manners which is most 

 troublesome under glass, because there is more 

 growth there, viz., a liability to canker, especially 

 at the point of union between stock and scion. As 

 this probably arises from the inability of the briar 

 stem to swell sufficiently for the growth of the Eose, 

 a useful preventive measure is to make one or two 

 longitudinal cuts through the bark, passing through 

 the point of union and extending some little way 



