EXPERIMENTS WITH VINES. 



71 



event, and sufficient sun, air, and moisture, could be 

 obtained, yet the vine-roots never disturbed by digging 

 or trenching ; and no doubt this is one reason for the 

 great and long-continued fruitfulness of the vines in 

 question. 



The only other case of this character which I shall 

 describe, as founded on my own experience, was the 

 raising of the roots of a house of vines in the gardens 

 at Dalkeith in June 1855. It was evident that the 

 roots of the vines in question had grown down to the 

 subsoil, and I determined to raise them and lay them 

 in new soil. On the 8 th of June, after covering the 

 glass of the house with a tarpaulin, I had a trench cut 

 down right along the border, within 12 feet of the 

 front of the house, and then cleared away all the old 

 soil and raised the roots close up to the front wall. 

 We thus had the whole of the roots disengaged from 

 the soil, as there was then no border inside the house. 

 I had them laid as fast as possible into the new soil, 

 and well- watered. Their foliage all flagged and hung 

 down ; but I kept the house close, moist, and warm, 

 and excluded all the direct rays of the sun effectually. 

 The berries in the bunches were the size of peas, and 

 for a few days they were quite wrinkled in their skins. 

 At the end of a week the leaves began to turn up a little. 

 I then took off the tarpaulin and put on a lighter shad- 

 ing of tiffany, and in the course of another week I 

 removed this also and put on hexagon netting. In a 

 month from the date of the operation they were per- 

 fectly recovered and growing fast. They ripened 30 lb. 

 of good grapes the same year, and in 1856 bore a splen- 

 did crop of fruit, and continued to do so for three sub- 

 sequent years. The vines were, however, old, and had 

 been pruned on the long-spur system, which rendered 



