202 Preserving Grapes through Winter and Spring. 



autumn the large rooms in their dwelling-houses were specially de- 

 voted to keeping grapes thus, and hung from floor to ceiling with 

 well-flavoured fruit. That Baron Rothschild, who has in Seine et 

 Mame one of the finest gardens and country-seats in existence, with 

 every means of growing and keeping grapes in the ordinary way, 

 should have a special apartment constructed in which to carry out 

 this method, and cut down in autumn aU the fruit of his late vineries 

 to be preserved in this way and used during the winter by crowds 

 of distinguished guests, does not seem a very convincing proof that 

 the method was "universally acknowledged not to be a success." 

 But these are facts which can be testified to by Mr. James Barnes, 

 of Bicton, as well as myself j and if he be not able to judge of its 

 merits, who is ? If I mistake not he saw the October clearance of 

 the vineries at Ferrifires with some envy as well as satisfaction, re- 

 membering the long period which has hitherto elapsed before the 

 gardener can do as he likes with his vines or with the contents of 

 his vineries. 



P.S. (April 24th). — Shortly after writing the above I addressed 

 a note to the Gardener s Chronicle, asking the Reverend M. J. 

 Berkeley for fuller reasons for condemning this mode of keeping 

 grapes than he had given when addressing the Royal Horticultural 

 Society, and for some proof that the method had been universally 

 admitted not to be a success. In his reply in that journal, he takes 

 no notice whatever of the changes that are well known to occur in 

 grapes kept for months after they are ripe in the atmosphere of a 

 glass house, so exceedingly liable to vicissitudes ; and, contrary to 

 his wont, he does not even take any notice of the luxuriant and 

 interesting fungoid growths which are frequently to be observed 

 upon grapes kept in the ordinary way ; but he goes " theoreti- 

 cally" into suppositions of what changes might take place in a 

 case which, though so easy to be tested, he has not tried. He 

 admits, what he before doubted, that the charcoal would keep the 

 water sweet ; and he alludes to the " French method of keeping 

 grapes in bottles of water hermetically sealed" (!) thus conclusively 

 showing that he knows nothing whatever about a method which 



