156 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
At this point I must refer to the flowering of open-air Vines in October 
1878. I saw it in several counties and I saw * Castel Coch ' on 
November 9. The Vines were all in flower, and many had passed that 
stage and had well-formed Grapes. The explanation of this phenomenon 
is that with a long warm summer we had a warm and abnormally wet 
August, succeeded by a fine warm September. And this precocity or 
special fruiting was followed by the only year that in twenty-seven years 
of Vine-growing I can call really bad. 1879 was bad. The year 1888 
came, I think, next nearest to a failure of any of these other years as far 
as my observation is extended ; July 1888 was cold and wet following on 
a cold June, and August only improved on the 58°-0 average temperature 
for July by l°-2, including the hottest day of the year, tbe 10th of the 
month, the maximum being 87°*7. 
To those who never tire of depreciating our climate, and who say that 
we cannot ripen Grapes in England, I beg to reply by calling their atten- 
tion to a simple fact. I cut my Grapes in 1888, about October 10, and 
immediately went to France, and about forty-eight hours after cutting my 
own I went into the market at Rheims and closely examined those on 
sale there. They were no better, scarcehj so good as mine. No doubt the 
Rheims market Grapes were taken for the most part either from vine- 
yards or gardens in which the Vines were grown as bushes or espaliers, 
with a few from cottage walls, and my Grapes were grown on a south wall 
in a suburb of London. But whatever disadvantage the Rheims Grapes 
laboured under by being grown in the open was, I think, not unfairly 
matched by my Grapes at that time not getting the sun imtil after 
12 o'clock. I may here remark that in such years as 1879 and 1888, 
besides the low temperature and absence of sunshine, there is excessive 
moisture and also a more smoky atmosphere, house fires being maintained 
almost continuously throughout the season. 
If the clerk of the weather would only predict the main characteristics 
of the weather of such years, we might make good use of them by making 
them " Sabbatical years." The idea of a " Sabbatical year " has very 
much to recommend it, especially in the case of Vines. I include it in 
the calculations I have made with regard to the cost of planting and 
management of vineyards when consulted about whether they will pay 
in this country. 
Leaving the theory on one side, let anyone, whether connected with 
the wine trade or not, consider this : — The great 1893 vintage in France 
severely taxed the Vines, which not only during the 110 days that it 
takes to make a vintage, but for a month besides, had no more than half 
an inch of rain, and in some places none at all. The truth is, the Vines 
were crippled. Both the fruiting canes and the new ones should have 
been pruned right out and a " Sabbatical " year's recuperation allowed to 
them. If this had been done there would have been none of the Vine 
diseases which were rampant in 1894, and the great expense of chemi- 
cally cleansing and stimulating the Vines to produce a vintage which 
when produced was in my opinion, in the first place, not wanted, and, in 
the second place, very inferior — would have been saved. Without the 
wines of that year those of 1893 would have fetched — as they deserved — 
better prices, and the wines of the following year, though generally good, 
