140 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[ August 17, 1893. 
trained by the continental guides whom Mark Twain has told us 
about in “ The Innocents Abroad,” several of whom sold him half 
of a sacred relic, and others the whole of it. Under the circum¬ 
stances there is room for reasonable doubt as to the real age of the 
Vine, and that point must be passed over undecided. 
Two facts seem to show that it was first planted in association 
with others. One of these is that the front wall is built with 
arches throughout, and the other that the Vine, as already 
mentioned, is not in the centre of the structure. Probably it 
originally had companions, and these were removed one by one 
when it was observed that the Black Hamburgh was bent on 
developing into something out of the common. It is planted 
inside, but there is no border either inside or out. Where the 
roots are feeding no man knows. There are none at the surface. 
Probably the majority have gone into the lower strata of gravel 
and sand, and betaken themselves in the direction of the lake 
which is a considerable distance away. There is a depth of about 
4 feet of soil before coming to the gravel. It is light and sandy, 
but has been rendered more substantial by manorial additions 
From the front wall of the vinery to a wall opposite there is a 
distance of 88 feet. This ground was originally not cropped, and 
the wall left bare, the argument being that the vegetables and 
fruit trees would rob the Yine; but as there was a choice assort¬ 
ment of Nettles, Docks, &c., when Mr. Grant took charge, and the 
Yine still lived, he thought he might just as well put in something 
useful. The walls are now covered with trees, the ground cropped 
with vegetables, and Tomatoes even grown on the front wall of 
the vinery. The Yine seems to go on better than ever. The 
ground has been manured very heavily for the vegetables, and the 
soil thus enriched, a course which few would find fault with. On 
another point, however, the present grower comes into direct 
conflict with the prevailing opinion, and that is in relation to the 
burying of animal carcases in the border. He believes in it and 
practises it, except that instead of planting dead donkeys he 
generally plants dead deer. Instances have been quoted of carcases 
being buried in borders and years afterwards not a root found near 
them. This is exactly contrary to the experience of the Silwood 
gardener. His observation has taught him, he says, that it is quite 
correct so long as the mass is putrid, but that when quite decom¬ 
posed the roots do undoubtedly seek and feed upon it. 
Somewhat lengthened reference has been made to the Silwood 
Yine because it has not been previously described, and not because 
it is advanced as the finest Yine in Britain. There are others which 
exceed it in dimensions, and which perhaps produce heavier crops. 
The Manresa Yine, for instance, fills a house 224 feet long and 
11 feet wide, and is said to cover 3825 square feet of glass. It has 
seven rods running parallel with the wall, like the Silwood Yine 
but their aggregate length considerably exceeds that of the latter 
amounting to 1400 feet, as against the 1112 feet of the Ascot 
Goliath. If anything, however, the crop is a little lighter. The 
Koehampton Yine, which has again been a wonderful sight this 
year, has carried 706 bunches, weighing 940 lbs., Mr. Cordes’ 
giant producing 1037 lbs., and it may be said that the crop 
from these two Yines is nearly 17| cwts. of excellent Grapes. The 
Manresa Yine is in admirable condition, being vigorous, healthy, 
and clean, with grand laterals well matured and giving the best 
promise for another season. Both it and the Silwood Yine are 
magnificent examples, of which the respective gardeners may be 
justly proud. 
The Yine at Speddoch in Dumfriesshire, which formed the 
subject of an able communication in the Journal last summer, is 
another of the Goliaths of Grapedom. It fills a house 60 feet by 
20 feet, and is trained vertically instead of horizontally. Its 
champion made no claim for its supremacy on the score of 
dimensions, and as he states that its girth at the ground just below 
its branches is 2 feet 4 inches as against the 3 feet 2 inches of the 
Silwood Yine, and the house is much smaller than that covering 
the latter, which in turn is smaller than the Koehampton structure, 
such a claim could certainly not be substantiated. When he spoke 
of its crop, however, he had something quite different to say. The 
number of bunches was “ considerably over 500.” This, I might 
remark in passing, is a somewhat loose statement ; surely there was 
no insuperable obstacle to, their being counted. Then we were told 
that the smallest of them could not be much less than 2 lbs. in 
weight, while some of the largest weighed 4 or 5 lbs. and upwards. 
This is very remarkable for a Yine nearly a hundred years old. 
The total weight in 1891 was “ considerably ” (vague word) “ over 
1000 lbs., and it was estimated that the 1892 crop was going to 
exceed that by 200 lbs. If it did so, if 1200 lbs. of Grapes were 
actually cut from the Speddoch Yine, then beyond doubt it is 
more remarkable than either of the others in fruiting, and it must 
unquestionably be a splendid Yine. 
Two other giants of the Grape world are the Cumberland 
Lodge Yine, which fills a house 138 feet long and 24 feet wide, and 
the Breadalbane one, which is said to cover 4275 superficial feet of 
roof space, and may thus be fairly awarded the palm as the largest 
Yine in the kingdom. I am tempted, in the absence of any 
personal knowledge of it and its cropping powers, to suggest that a 
few notes by someone who has seen it and secured statistics would 
be of great interest to readers of the Journal.—W. P. W. 
BAD MELONS. 
“ It will soon be time to ask what Melons are grown for,” 
observed one of the judges at a show recently. He was suffering 
by a surfeit after tasting about twenty fruits, not one of them 
even second rate in quality and most of them positively offensive. 
Perhaps the adjudicator was not in the most amiable mood, and 
he certainly could not judge another class till he banished the 
horrid “after taste,” which made him shudder, by taking a little 
brandy. Some of the fruits were in a state of semi-fermentation ; 
one seemed to have a paraffin flavour, and the other tasted as if it 
had been pickled in salt. To say that several were no better than 
Turnips would be a libel on a good old vegetable. They were not 
half so pleasant to the taste as a tender slice of a crisp sweet 
Turnip. 
“ What are suchMelons grown for?” The majority of them could 
not have been made palatable even with sugar and wine. Perhaps 
they were grown to “look well ” on the table. Three of them 
were presentable, the remainder miserable enough in appearance ; 
some not half a pound in weight, others innocent of netting ; some 
“ pitted ” by the nibbling of thrips or other insects that had been 
trying them. In a word the fruits as a whole were not fit to be seen, 
could not be eaten, and were entirely out of place on the exhibition 
table. 
The majority of the fruits appeared to be the produce of 
starved or exhausted plants, and if foliage had been shown as well 
as the fruit the former would, perhaps, have been somewhat of a 
revelation. It is almost certain we should have seen small apologies 
for leaves, some more than half scorched, others approaching 
tinder. We might have expected to find hungry colonies of red 
spider and thrips that had extracted all the sweetness they could 
from the plants, leaving nothing for the fruits to render them 
eatable ; and it may be that white fleecy masses of mealy bug 
would not have been absent. It is perfectly certain that no such 
bad fruits would have been produced by plants carrying stout, 
clean, healthy green foliage. 
Scorching, crowding and starvation ruin Melons and render the 
fruits of the best varieties worthless. Under good management 
the plants are kept growing till the fruit is ripe, the leaves being 
neither specked nor shrivelled, but fresh, firm, and green. Inherently 
good varieties are then brought out in the highest condition while 
the fruits of relatively inferior sorts are made the best of, these, 
let it be said, not being half so bad as the best sorts are under 
negligent management or erroneous methods of culture. 
Melon growing appears to have come to such a pass that it is 
hard to find sufficient fruits in a class worthy of the prizes at 
almost any show. It is almost becoming a surprise, as it certainly 
is a treat, to find three Melons out of twenty of really first class 
quality, fleshy, juicy, and refreshing, with a delightful aroma. Is 
the Melon being spoiled by searchings for improvement and the 
production of “Heroes” to which some hybridizer hopes to im¬ 
mortalise his name ? or is the cultivation—as in the case of Peaches 
on walls in scores of gardens—becoming a “lost art?” There is 
something wrong, radically and glaringly wrong, about this Melon 
question, but whether the fault is to be traced to that ubiquitous 
