188 



ON THE AGE AND 



at Bury, in Suffolk, has favoured me with the 

 following elegant and surprising account of a Vine 

 now growing there : 



January 6. 1786. 



" If credit may be given to our gardeners, the 

 nature of our Bury soil is particularly favourable 

 to the- gooseberry, the pear, and the Vine. By all 

 these, but especially by the produce of the Vine, 

 my neighbour Gervase Coe is getting money very 

 fast. One Vine, which he calls the Black Cluster, 

 covers forty-four yards in length, of a wall ten 

 feet high. Some of the branches have been suf- 

 fered to run over the wall, and cover about twelve 

 yards more in length on the other side. This 

 extensive plant is about five or six and thirty 

 years old. But this is no datum by which we 

 must calculate the proportion of its annual growth ; 

 for, during near half the time of its existence, it 

 was, by its proximity to places unfit to receive its 

 branches, confined within very narrow limits, and 

 to judge from its progress within these last seven 

 or eight years, it might, if it had been permitted, 

 have covered three or four times the area of wall 

 which it does at present. 



" That part of the wall against which this 

 Vine was first trained has a south aspect. But 

 three-fourths of the walling which it now covers 

 face the east, and the twelve yards over the wall 

 the west. 



" As no wine is ever made of the whole produce 



