OCTOBER. 
229 
the apex and the -walls. The last time I saw it in company with Mr. Kay was in 1862. I 
saw it again in 1864, when it had a full crop of excellent G-rapes, weighing, as I have since 
learned, 476 lbs. In 1865 it bore 400 lbs of Grapes ; in 1866, three hundred bunches, some of 
them weighing 5 lbs. It took seven years to furnish the house with bearing wood. The 
girth of the stem where it enters the house is at this date, May 1867, 14 inches. Mr. Osborne, 
an old pupil of Mr. Kay’s, has ably carried out his preceptor’s mode of managing this noble 
Vine; and I trust it may long remain in robust health, a fitting monument to one who had 
few equals as an enthusiastic cultivator of the Vine, and one who stands alone as having 
built a large house, and planted it with a single Yine, to test a theory which some writers of 
the present day are starting as a new one.” 
LABELLING FRUIT TREES. 
Finding the lead labels on the fruit walls here, not so legible as could 
be desired, especially when reading them from the walks, I have tried 
rubbing into the letters two coats of white lead or paint, and they now 
can be read quite plainly. To some this may be no information ; but 
others who may not have tried it, will find it the best and most permanent 
mode of labelling the fruit trees on their Avails and borders. Some years 
ago I had the leads used here, and the printing materials, made by the 
firm of Lingham Brothers, Ironmongers, Birmingham. They likewise 
furnished galvanised iron sockets for fixing the stamped leads in for the 
borders. The leads are cut in this shape, being about 
4 inches in length, and 2\ inches in breadth, and are 
packed in packets of fifty each. The dots in the flanges at 
the sides sIioav where they are nailed to the walls. When 
fixed in the iron sockets, these flanges are bent round, and clenched on 
the other side. The labels then for the borders are in this shape. 
When stamping the leads with the letters, I use a block of 
iron made for the leads to fit in, and over them is placed a thin 
iron plate Avith three open lines wherein to stamp the names 
on the leads. When printing the leads, I have the steel pieces 
which contain the letters on the tops, all fixed alphabetically 
in a tin box with a small square hole for each, and by being 
able to pounce on the letter required, the printing is done 
systematically, and with rapidity. There has been no end of labels tried 
for naming fruit trees in the open air; but whether made of heart of oak, 
porcelain, or cast iron, they have all failed of being permanent. With lead 
labels, however, the case is different; and when the letters are brought out by 
using the white paint now and then, little more can fie desired for the purpose. 
The way the painting is done here, is to rub over the letters twice with a 
little white lead, and then take a rough piece of cloth or sacking to Avipe the 
paint off the face of the label, the doing which forces the paint deeper 
into the letters. 
Welbeck. William Tillery. 
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HUnmnmmanajiBfi.l 
NOVELTIES AT FLOWER SHOWS, &c. 
A atery fine lot of Hollyhocks was shown before the Floral Committee, on 
August 20th, by Mr. Cliater, Saffron Walden, and two fine new seedlings 
by the Rev. E. Hawke, Gainsborough. A line of about a dozen spikes of 
floAvers, from Mr. Chater, some of them neAV kinds, shown for the first time, 
were an exhibition in themselves. First-class certificates were aAvarded to 
the following :—Alba superba (Chater), a large pure white flower, of good sub- 
