160 
[July, 
THE FLORIST AND POMOLOGHST. 
and placing them in bottles of water in February or March, the vines can be pruned 
and dressed in due season. This year I kept some Barbarossas [Gros Guillaume], 
Alicantes, Royal Vineyards, and West’s St. Peter’s—the latter the best flavoured 
of all late grapes—-till the end of March, by bottling them. This way of pre¬ 
serving late grapes is therefore a great boon to gardeners where grapes are looked 
for all the year round ; and Mr. Robinson deserves our thanks for bringing the 
system so prominently into notice. 
I have five vineries here for growing late Grapes, so that the system has been 
tried on a large scale, and found very useful for preserving the latest supply, when 
the vines required pruning, or the vineries painting. The bottles I use for the 
purpose are pint ones, with a piece of string tied round the neck to fasten 
them to the wires when they are hung in a vinery. When the bunches are in¬ 
serted in the bottles, with a piece of the old wood attached to them, they 
exactly balance the bottles, and keep clear of the wires. When the bunches are 
small, the bottles stand on the shelves of a fruit-room without toppling over, and 
only require a little attention in picking out decaying berries, and adding a little 
water to the bottles to replace that lost through evaporation. When the grapes 
are kept long, a few pieces of charcoal are put into each bottle, to keep the water 
sweet, which I find it effectually does. For keeping the very latest lot of grapes 
in bottles of water, I select only small compact bunches of Lady Downe’s Seedling. 
This variety is generally known to produce a large shoulder to each bunch, and 
this is clipped off at thinning time to produce these bunches for late keeping.— 
William Tillery, Welbeck. 
THE PANSY. 
HIS is one of the florists’ flowers which have been undeservedly neglected 
in the neighbourhood of London, except, indeed, in so far as it has been 
adopted for lines in ribbon borders, or for massing in the spring flower 
garden, for which purposes the decided colours of the Pansy are well 
adapted. There are few flowers more widely known and more easily cultivated. 
In England the Pansy is known as the u Heartsease ” to every cottager, but the 
flowers grown are of the commonest description, starry in the centre, and very 
much wanting in shape ; whereas in Scotland, where the Pansy is extensively 
grown in tlie gardens of amateurs and cottagers, the culture of it as a florists’ flower 
is well understood. The colder and more humid atmosphere of Scotland is more 
congenial to the plant, and the blooming period is there, as a consequence, of longer 
duration. One of the essentials to successful culture is a good depth of sandy 
loam, well enriched with cow-manure, which latter, being of a cool nature, is 
the most suitable fertiliser that can be used. 
I will first treat of propagation, which should be effected by cuttings, and not by 
dividing the roots. The best time to take the cuttings is early in the autumn, 
avoiding the strong pipy flowering shoots, and selecting the small shoots which 
