STOCKS FOR TENDER VINES. 



59 



whicli the house may be aired as usual for a vinery. 

 I observed from the complaints made in the horticul- 

 tural press in the summer of 1864, that this disease 

 was very prevalent — just as I would have expected 

 during so hot a summer, and with, in too many cases, 

 defective means of ventilation. 



STOCKS FOR TENDER VINES. 



Those who have paid most attention to the subject 

 have come to the conclusion that many of the highest 

 flavoured of our grapes, which are at the same time the 

 most delicate and difficult to grow with success on their 

 own roots, will one day be grown with perfect ease 

 when we have discovered the proper stocks for them, 

 and that late-ripening varieties will be got to ripen 

 earlier when grafted on earlier stocks. I have not 

 myself proved the correctness of the latter, but have 

 read of instances of it, and, reasoning from analogy, 

 am prepared to believe it. Of the former I had a strik- 

 ing proof in the case of the Muscat Hamburg on the 

 black Hamburg stock : on its own roots I have not 

 grown it above 2 lb. weight ; while on the Hamburg 

 stocks I have had it 5 lb. weight, with larger berries 

 and much better finished in every way than on its own 

 roots. I have proved the black Barbarosa to be a most 

 unsuitable stock for the Bowood Muscat — so much so, 

 that the fruit never ripened at all on it, while by its 

 side the Bowood Muscat ripened perfectly on its own 

 roots. The importance of this experiment lay in the 

 proof it gave that a late stock procrastinated the ripen- 

 ing of the variety grown on it ; from which one is led 

 to infer that an early stock, like Sweetwater or Chassels 

 Musque, would facilitate the ripening of late sorts in- 



