46 



JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



and upon some occasions sound advice to try remedies long 

 ago tried in vain. 



More frequently it lias been my lot to be assured that such 

 things are impossible under proper cultivation. To this there 

 can be no reply ; and yet the course of time has answered it. 

 The proper cultivator has reappeared, before growing visibly 

 older, infected with his own impossibility. But these remarks 

 are beside the mark, and are only offered in proof of my sense 

 that for the present honour I am indebted to no kind of merit, 

 but rather to every kind of misfortune. With the one exception 

 of Phylloxera, my Vines have been visited by every evil which the 

 flesh of Grape is heir to ; and thus the subject has forced itself 

 on the penitent but patient cultivator. 



With the general treatment of theVine — the planting, pruning, 

 training, watering, giving of air, and such like — this little paper 

 has no concern. We suppose the fair subject to have fair play, 

 so far as mankind can ensure it ; and then when it tries to be 

 good and grateful, it falls among alien enemies. Everyone knows 

 the fair beauty of the Vine — the kindest, most elegant, clinging, 

 and trustful of all the good creatures that adorn our life, and 

 therewith one of the most useful. And when tribulation falls upon 

 it, the gardener, who loves it as his own child, is afflicted as with 

 a home-sorrow. But he must not fold his hands and weep, nor 

 even run for a fashionable doctor. Without loss of a moment he 

 must fall to, find the mischief, and try the remedy. 



This is more easily said than done. The mischief is manifold ; 

 the cause mysterious, at least in some of the cases now considered. 

 Science— the knowledge of cause, and therefore of effect — is 

 coming to our aid, slowly but surely, as its character requires. 

 In a few more years we (or our successors) shall have finer in- 

 struction than the light of nature, trimmed by the longest 

 experience, can afford. But science, to most of us, as yet means 

 little but experiment versus experience. 



Treading in the ancient ways, and under feeble rule of thumb, 

 we may divide the foes aroused by the popularity of the Grape 

 mainly into two bad classes — those which are of vegetable order, 

 chiefly fungoid, and those of animal existence, insects, devouring 

 insects ; while enemies that cannot be referred to either class may 

 frankly be called miscellaneous. 



I. Kegarding the question broadly thus, without keener 



