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LXXXIV. Account of a Method practised by Mr. James 

 Mean, Gardener to Sir Abraham Hume, Bart, at Worm- 

 leybury, in Hertfordshire ,for ripening Grapes by means of 

 Dung-heat under a common hot-bed frame. Drawn up by 

 the late George Anderson, Esq. F. L. S. fyc. 



Read April 1, 1817. 



Jin i s method is particularly applicable in cases where vines 

 are trained to walls, and do not ripen their fruit, nor bear 

 well. The frame must be high enough, in the sides, to admit 

 of the vines being trained horizontally on a trellis, to keep 

 the pendant bunches clear of the dung, and to give free 

 room for the leaves, between the vine branches and the 

 glass. The frames used at Wormleybury have either one 

 or two lights ; the latter are nine feet long and six feet 

 wide ; the fronts of the frames are eighteen inches high, and 

 the backs are two feet high ; the trellis is fixed nine inches 

 from the glass, which gives sufficient space above and below. 

 The upper board at the back of the frame, being nine in- 

 ches wide, lifts up or slides off, so that the branches are laid 

 in without suffering the injury they would sustain in their 

 buds, if they were drawn through holes. In the first or 

 second week in April, just before the vines begin to move 

 you make up a common dung hot-bed, at a convenient 

 distance from the wall, or from the place where the shoots 

 of the vines are ; lay your frame on the bed, with its back 

 towards the vine, and fronting the sun, as it would naturally 

 be, if placed against a south wall : the branches must then 



