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1852.1 THE PHILADELPHIA FLORIST. 197 



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(T^Hawthomdens and Nonpareils, but Ave can raise our own heroes, and^V 

 point to our Newtown pippins, our Baldwins, Pennocks, and Northern 

 Spvs. So with pears in their Jargonelles, Chaumontelles and Gan- 

 sell's Bergamot — they have all that Victoria herself could wish. We 

 on the other hand, have raised our own Seckels, our Petie and our 

 Chancellor, though some of the Doyennes, Bonchretiens, & Duchesses, 

 still cling to the soil of their adoption. Proceeding on, we have the 

 Grape in the same category. Foreign kinds, with the exception, per- 

 haps, of the Golden Chasselas and Miller's Burgundy, refuse to ac- 

 knowledge the potency of our "soil and climate" to bring them to 

 unapproached perfection. They must await the same course of ope- 

 rations as our other fruits ; to be carefully hybridised, or sported from 

 seeds. In the mean time we have learned the lesson that the foreign 

 grape can only be successfully raised under glass ; the knowledge of 

 this fact has become so wide-spread that graperies are springing up in 

 the vicinity of every town almost, and the cultivators and cultivation 

 of this fine subject threaten to rival the Dutch Tulip mania, or the 

 more recent Multicaulis bubble, with this difference — that it promises 

 to be more profitable. The gardening community, like all other sec- 

 tions of the human family, must have some hobby. It is well that it 

 is looking towards a point so rational and practicable. We are con- 

 vinced that notwithstanding the length of time the grape has been un- 

 der glass cultivation, perfection has yet to be attained. There is not 

 a subject connected with grape growing, from the formation of the 

 bolder for the roots to the gathering in of the bunches, but will bear 

 to be written upon again and again. There has been too much of 

 dictative dogmatism — too little of actual experiment ; and even where 

 the latter has been employed, conclusions have been often too hastily 

 arrived at, through a dim perception of the relation between cause and 

 effect. The pages of the "Horticulturist" will bear witness to the 

 gr^at difference of opinion between our most distinguished horticultur- 

 ists. The great majority of grape growers still prefer deep, rich bor- 

 ders ; they know the vine to be a "gross feeder ," and they have pro- 

 duced their finest fruits from soil loaded with carrion, and highly sti- 

 mulating substances \ others repudiate "the whole hog," contending 

 that a moderately rich soil, all other circumstances being well arrang- 

 ed, will produce as fine fruit as the purse-exhausting animalised bor- 

 ders. R. Buist stands forth conspicuously as an advocate of the latter 

 mode ; a cultivator whose extensive experience has probably caused 



the "other side" to dread the advance of their arguments in reply. 



So also in the various modes of pruning, training, airino- and ventilat- 

 ing — still the same diversity of opinion exists. 



There seems to be a general tendency to consider the vine generally 

 nDfti too severely pruned — one-half the cultivators arguing, physiologi- Q 



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