144 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[ August 18, 1892. 
Paasing many pages we come to a few lines in a chapter on the 
“ Pleasures of Country Life,” over which gardeners may ponder, some 
perhaps with advantage, and not less so the owners of gardens :— 
“ ‘ The garden for the gardener ’ is a theory that many a younger 
member, at least, of the country dwelling families has resented, and it is 
one indeed that brings an unbearable tyranny. But how comes it to 
exist? Because the gardener, too often, is the only person who knows 
what should be known about a garden—its fruits and vegetables and 
seeds, its flowers and frames (hot and cold), its forcing houses with 
their delicate crops of Melons, Pines, Peaches, and so forth. There is, 
indeed, some pity for the gardener whose efforts are only appreciated in 
the results he produces, in the fine flowers and the well-flavoured fruits 
he can bring to table, and yet wliose efforts are sometimes frustrated by 
1 young Miss,’ whose nimble fingers act the part of procurer to her long¬ 
ing eyes. But if young and old alike had some intelligent interest in 
the raising of flowers or fruit from seed, the pruning of fruit trees, the 
management of plants, and all the thousand other matters that make a 
garden interesting, there would be less tension between gardeners and 
their employers, and there would be a source of pleasure perennially 
open to dwellers in the country.” 
Dr. Alger points out in his chapter a somewhat anomalous position 
into which civilisation has led us. He says :— 
“On the score of wealth, when broad acres were first given to man 
had he any accessories whatever ? Had he not to gain his bread by the 
sweat of his brow, to work early and late, to hunt and fish for his food 
before he could eat it ? Thence, onward, through cycles of years has he 
gone on working and toiling, anon being assisted by the springs of 
civilisation, until now in this the decade of the nineteenth century we 
find him being fed by others, his own bodily powers having been carried 
by the forces of his long-life history to other kinds of motion, all, how¬ 
ever, making up that mysterious phase that we call life. This, we say, 
is the result of our civilisation, our intercourse with other countries, our 
interchange of ideas. Well, bo it so I But does it follow that we are 
bound to let others feed us with the produce of their lands, while our 
own broad acres are lying wasted and wasting ? ” 
Mr. Gilbert Murray has a few strong words to say against deep 
■ cultivation, but by this he means soil inversion, or covering the surface 
• of land with hungry subsoil, and he treats scientifically on soil improve¬ 
ment as follows :— 
“ The chief object of cultivation is to bring the atmospheric air into 
direct contact with the chemical constituents contained in the soil, the 
most valuable of which are nitrogen, phosphoric acid, potash, soda, lime, 
and magnesia. Before the nitrogen of the soil can be utilised by plants 
it must first be oxidised. The object of cultivation is to bring the 
atmospheric air into contact with the nitrogen in the soil, which takes 
. up the nitrogen and forms nitric acid ; this chemical change is chiefly 
performed in the soil through the agency of living organisms which are 
present in the soil in myriads, ltecent discoveries in plant nutrition 
have opened up a new and interesting field of investigation. There can 
be no nitrification without the aid of living germs ; these are admittedly 
of a low order of life, the oxygen of the air is of itself sufficient to 
sustain their operations ; darkness is also requisite for their activity. 
This will explain to the cultivator the advantage wherever practicable 
of stirring, rather than inverting the soil ; the action of these microbes 
and their operations cease at a temperature slightly above freezing, and 
cannot endure a temperature of more than 100°. They are most active 
in their operations a few inches below the surface, and practically 
become inoperative at a depth of 10 inches, hence their activity is 
greatest near the surface. This is clearly apparent in the development 
of young fruit trees of five or six years’ growth where mulching or 
surface manuring has been practised. Within a few inches of the 
surface there is a complete network of slender roots, or spongioles, whilst 
not a root has penetrated the soil beyond a foot. Where no surface 
manuring has been practised the trees are sending down tap-rootH to a 
considerable depth into the subsoil. In waterlogged soils these organisms 
are destroyed, hence the eff >rt of the scientific cultivator is to have the 
land drained, keep the manure near the surface, and wherever practicable, 
to keep the soil frequently stirred.” 
Writing on the depreciation of land (which he evidently regards as 
a reaction on inflated values), and on the future prospects of farmers, 
Mr. W. E. Bear, an admitted authority, writes :— 
“ 1 am far from desiring to represent the prospects of farmers in too 
optimistic a manner. They will possibly have a struggle for years to 
come, and they will need the advantages of moderate rents and many 
improvements in the economy of farming and marketing to which 
references will be found in other parts of this volume. It must not be 
forgotten that the enormousadvancc of rents which followed the Russian 
war did much to produce the crisis which made land for many years a 
drug in the market. Landlords and farmers alike were greatly injured 
in the long run by the war prices ; but neither such prices nor the mad 
scramble for farms at any rent will be likely to recur. What is to be 
looked for is moderate agricultural prosperity, with its natural con¬ 
sequence, an improved demand for land. I believe that capital sunk in 
land at present prices will prove an excellent investment, and that 
farmers who take leases at current rents will have reason to congratulate 
themselves a few years hence. There is much to be done by Parliament, 
by landlords, and by farmers themselves to bring farming in this country 
under the most favourable conditions for its full development, but if all 
who are responsible in this connection will co-operate in efforts for the 
advancement of agriculture, there will be every reason to count con¬ 
fidently upon the prosperity of the oldest and most important of all 
industries.” 
Among the writers on fruit culture as improving the value of land 
we find Mr. J. Wright. After strongly denouncing the promulgation 
of fabulous profits, based on the prices of prize fruits or an unusually 
productive tree, he still goes on to say :— 
“ There is no known case where the best varieties of hardy fruits 
have been planted in appropriate positions and fertile soil of good staple 
during the past ten years in this country, and the trees and bushes have 
made good progress under good culture, that the value of the land has 
not been substantially improved. That broad general fact is significant 
and encouraging. There is not a land agent or valuer in the kingdom 
who can say that plantations of thrifty young fruit trees, either in the 
bearing stage or approaching it, do not increase both the letting and 
selling value of properties on which they are established. Ancient 
orchards of debilitated trees in inferior varieties planted in bygone 
generations may, and doubtless do, give a ‘ bad character ’ to land ; 
their woe-begone appearance is depressing and suggests poverty of the 
soil, which they have, in fact, long since deprived of the essentials to 
healthy growth and productiveness. It has to be remembered, however, 
that those orchards and trees do not represent culture but neglect, and 
the natural concomitant of this always has been, is, and will be depre¬ 
ciation in the value of land in those rural districts where it can only be 
devoted to the production of food for the animal world and the human 
family. Young trees possessing vigour of growth, and branches studded 
with spurs and bold buds, the certain precursors of blossom, have an 
exactly opposite effect ; they represent “ culture,” and impart a value 
to the land they occupy that it could not possess under ordinary agri¬ 
cultural tillage. This is proved to demonstration, not in Kent only, but 
wherever a well-conducted system of fruit culture has been in operation 
during the past few years. Where no mistakes have been made in 
planting, or after management, the results have been such as to lead to 
an extension of the practice as capital was forthcoming and more land 
could bo acquired, while there has been a great increase in the number 
of fruit growers in those districts where profitable object lessons have 
been afforded to enterprising pioneers.” 
Such growers as Messrs. Bunyard, Rivers, Baillie, and others are 
mentioned in this connection ; and Mr. II. A. Bond of Swanley, 
in an able and suggestive chapter, gives expression to similar views, 
sensibly observing that—“Although fruit growing is being profit¬ 
ably conducted as a distinct industry, attention is here directed to it 
as an adjunct to mixed farming rather than as a substitute for it. 
It would be idle to suppose that fruit growing can prove a panacea 
for all the ills of the farmer, but it may aid him greatly in his 
perplexity.” 
'These few extracts denote the nature of the work on those particular 
questions, but there arc dozens more treated by able men, and it may be 
expected that “Land: Its Attractions and Riches,” will find its way 
into the libraries of landowners, cultivators, and others who arc in¬ 
terested in the various aspects of the great and undeniably important 
subject in which they are embraced. The volume is a substantial one, 
well printed, and considering its size (900 pages) cannot be regarded as 
expensive. 
FUNCTIONS OF VINE LEAVES. 
Me. Togulden’s remarks under the above heading, on page 115, will 
have been read with interest by Grape growers, as they were by myself. 
My experience is quite in accord with his as to stopping laterals— 
namely, that there is no advantage in stopping these more than two 
leaves beyond the bunch. I have at present under my charge Vines 
planted little more than 2 feet apart, and it has been my practice this 
last dozen years to stop all the strongest laterals at the bunch, leaving 
none beyond, the medium at one leaf, and the weaker two or three 
leaves from the bunch. I think when a lateral is stopped at the bunch 
the sap is forced into it, and gives it a vigour in its early stages that it 
would not otherwise have. The sub-lateral at the bunch is allowed 
to make two or three leaves before being stepped, which is generally 
enough to fill the limited space at command. In my younger days 
I was taught to take out all the sub-laterals between the rod and 
the bunch. This I think is a great mistake, and now I only stop 
them when they are getting above the leaves on the lateral. If stopped 
once they do not often break again, but the few leaves they make 
are a great help to the smaller leaves at the base of the laterals 
to produce plump buds where they are most needed at pruning time. 
With these sub-laterals properly managed there will not be much 
to complain of as to the bunches getting smaller or fewer through 
the laterals being shortened in the way spoken of by your corre¬ 
spondent. 
Mr. Iggulden’s experience as to cutting bunches with a good part of 
the wood with them for exhibition does not agree with that of Mr. 
Roberts. That gentleman, in a paper read at a meeting at Brighton 
two or three years ago in connection with the Fruit Growers’Associa¬ 
tion, and subsequently published in these pages, stated that when he was 
an exhibitor of Grapes he could not but notice that he very frequently 
cut his best bunches for this pufyoso from the same spurs : and from 
this he concluded that a partial shortening of the laterals after the fruit 
was cut was a practice to be commended. To let a little more light into 
