COLD HOUSE FOR GRAPES. 
31i 
menced the intellectual festivities of the evening, 
without the aid of anything but water to excite or to 
exhilarate. Some complimentary allusions to Ed¬ 
ward Everett brought him to the floor, amid applause 
and cordial welcome. His speech was in his most 
graceful and happy style, and he was followed by 
Daniel Webster, Caleb Cushing, and others, with in¬ 
teresting and pertinent remarks. A letter was read 
from Samuel Appleton, expressing his regret at his 
inability to attend the festival, and enclosing $1,000 
for the benefit of the society, the interest to be ex¬ 
pended annually in premiums. 
I do not remember ever to have passed three hours 
of greater intellectual enjoyment, and was never more 
strongly impressed with the highly beneficial and 
moral effect of horticultural societies. I thought I 
could detect in the mass of intelligent faces around 
me, an evident consciousness of the nature of the 
occasion, a feeling of a purer atmosphere, of an un¬ 
usual prevalence of mental refinement. I cannot but 
think, that the springing up of these societies, and the 
increasing taste for the pure pleasures of horticulture, 
is one of the best signs of the times. 
If intercourse with natural objects, with the works 
of creation, tends to purify the mind, to increase our 
taste for the beautiful, and to lead us “ to look from 
Nature up to nature’s God,” then the increasing es¬ 
tablishment of horticultural societies may be deemed 
a harbinger of better things. It may excite a hope, 
approaching to certainty, that men will not always 
be engaged in political strife, or in the eager contest for 
wealth, but made conscious of their high destiny, will 
earnestly desire to possess those religious and moral 
feelings, in the cultivation of which a love of nature 
in all her forms, is not the least powerful instrument. 
Flushing , Sept ., 1845. S. B. Parsons. 
COLD HOUSE°FOR GRAPES. 
In this house a fire is never kept. It must be 
placed on a hill, or in the most airy situation. In 
such situations only the grapes are never troubled by 
mildew, and they enjoy a dry atmosphere. In lower 
situations mildews would ensue from dampness, 
which can only be dispelled by artificial heat from 
fires. The house is 24 feet in width, and 17 feet in 
height at the centre. The form is curvilinear, or in 
shape of the Gothic arch. The posts on the north 
and south sides are four feet in height, and boarded 
or planked to this height with doors opening outward 
and downward, between the posts, to serve as venti¬ 
lators. The whole roof on the north and south sides 
is formed of glass, and with no openings except a 
range of sliding sashes, at top, extending for two feet 
only on either side of the ridge pole, from end to end. 
The glass is set elsewhere on all the roof in sashes 
of slender stuff, bent and forming continuous ribs from 
end to end in one connected covering of common glass, 
placed about nine inches asunder. The ends also are 
wholly of glass, with doors which slide. 
The vines are grown without the house, in a bor¬ 
der dug two feet deep and no more, and kept naked 
when the vines have grown so as to afford full crops. 
This border is enriched by additions of well-rotted 
manure, mixed with oyster shells, or a good propor¬ 
tion of other calcareous substances, such as powdered 
or refuse limestone from cuttings of marble. The 
grape vines are introduced within the house a little 
below the surface of the earth. They are pruned 
and trained by the Thornery mode, which is to prune 
on the spur system. This consists in cutting in the 
branches of the vine or main stalk, to within a quar¬ 
ter of an inch of the base, relying for the crop on 
these almost invisible eyes for the future year. 
The operation of pruning is performed as soon as 
the leaf and footstalk begin to fade and have turned 
pale, which is generally in the first week of Novem¬ 
ber. The time is important in this system for many 
reasons; for if performed either too soon or too late, 
or at any other season or time, this superior system 
would not secure from failure in the future crop. If 
the pruning is deferred till midwinter, the sap becomes 
dissipated and lost in the wood thus taken away, and 
those eyes at the base become impoverished; or, if 
pruned before the time named, and while the sap con¬ 
tinues still in motion, and the leaves have power to 
perform their functions, there is danger that those 
eyes may burst; but by pruning at the only suitable 
time, the eyes concentrate a due portion of nourish¬ 
ment without bursting, and are ready to start in the 
spring. 
By this system the vines being thrown down in 
November, are secured from winter by evergreen 
leaves or moss; and the house being closed, they sleep 
during the winter months. Early in April, the lower 
part of the vine, to the height of three feet, is raised 
and secured to its place, all the top part being bent 
downward. In about a week after, or as soon as all 
the lower part or eyes are well broken, another yard 
of the wood is in like manner raised and secured to 
its place, until all the eyes below are broken. Thus 
proceed. It usually requires four weeks to elevate 
the whole vine to the top, causing all the eyes to 
break equally from summit to base. Yet were the 
whole vine raised at once, and secured to its proper 
place in the beginning, it would be barren in its lower 
part, and no eyes would break in that part; and from 
the natural tendency of the sap to rise, there would 
be fruit only at the summit. 
As soon as the vines show fruit, usually half the 
bunches are cut out; and in regard to the bunches 
that remain, when the fruit attains to the size of a 
small pea of the black Hamburg variety, more than 
half the berries are cut out with scissors. By this 
mode the fruit has more air; is never liable to rot 
from being crowded ; it ripens better and earlier; the 
berries attain to a very large and beautiful size, nor is 
the weight of fruit which they thus produce in the 
least diminished from this operation. A man will 
thin fifty bunches, or equivalent to what will pro¬ 
duce 50 lbs. in a day; and the labor, compared with 
the increased value and good quality of the fruit 
which is produced by this operation, is comparatively 
of no account. The vines are planted three feet 
asunder, and in autumn pruned to a single stalk. In 
spring they throw out the lateral shoots alternately 
on either side, at the distance of six inches asunder, 
and but one shoot is allowed to grow from each spur; 
if more than one start, all are suffered to grow for a 
time, when the weakest is taken away—and as these 
throw out their lateral shoots, they are nipped in at 
the distance of, or leaving one single eye from its base 
When these laterals are sufficiently grown they are 
nipped at their tips. William Kenrick 
Newtown, Mass., Sept. 15,1845. 
