EXPERIMENTS WITH VINES. 



73 



that the sentence at one time recorded against them for 

 their unsightliness has been revoked. 



Some may consider that I have been tediously par- 

 ticular in my efforts to explain this case ; but if so, 

 they must excuse me on account of my anxiety clearly 

 to establish the importance of bottom-heat for early- 

 forced vines ; and from my own experience in the case 

 of these vines, as well as from theoretical reasoning, I 

 have come to the conclusion that it is less destructive 

 to the constitution of vines to begin forcing them in 

 August than in October. My opinion on this subject 

 has been endorsed by Dr Lindley, whose great eminence 

 as a vegetable physiologist is universally recognised. 

 In his remarks in a leading article in * The Gardeners' 

 Chronicle' for February 22, 1862, on an article on this 

 subject, which I communicated to the ' Florist and Po- 

 mologist' of that month, he says : " It is quite evident, 

 as Mr Thomson points out, that the natural chemical 

 advantages are all on the side of the earlier-forced vines. 

 When started in August, they have before them three 

 months of comparatively fine weather, which is of im- 

 mense importance to them, and suffices for all the more 

 critical periods of their development. When started in 

 October to be ripe in March, the entire period of growth 

 belongs to the most dreary and unpropitious part of the 

 whole year ; so that it would seem resting the vines in 

 the hot dry months of summer — dryness being at that 

 period the maturing agent — and renewing the growth 

 in August so as to snatch as much as possible of the 

 fine weather of autumn for all the earlier stages of 

 growth, turns out, in practice as it does in theory, to 

 be the proper course for producing new ripe grapes on 

 New Year's Day, and this with better results than 

 would be obtained a couple of months later." 



