20 
THE FLORIST AND POMOLOGIST. 
t January, 
of aerial roots, indicating almost as clearly as words could express, that if such a 
Vine had been taken up in autumn, and some 9 ft. or 10 ft. of its stem laid in a 
new border of well-prepared compost, we should not have had to wait for fruit; 
while the roots, instead of issuing into a moist atmosphere under the shade of 
the useless foliage, would have run wild into the well-prepared medium of the 
fresh Vine-border. Why, the very fact of the roots issuing always from the 
under-side of the Vine, and never from the upper side, in the vinery, would con¬ 
firm my statement that its atoms had intelligence enough to run on their own 
tramway, and take downward and bear fruit upward. 
In propagating the Vine by 44 eyes ”—that is to say, by buds with an inch of 
vine above and below the bud—we have a kind of truncheon with only one bud 
to animate it, and yet we never think of its not succeeding. Many years ago, a 
long cane was coiled into a large flower-pot, with an idea that by rooting through 
all its length, the cane might bear fruit abundantly ; and as this weedy plant has 
always accommodated itself to good or bad treatment, the crop was fairly good,'" 
but nothing extra to warrant any one going farther in that direction. This was 
carrying the theory of rooting as far as it would go, and the Pot-vine growers have 
returned to well-ripened canes, and have not been disappointed. Much of the 
success of Pot Vines is to be ascribed to the even temperature afforded to root 
and branch, as both are housed, and not treated as we often see Vines—the leaf 
in a first-class carriage going at railway speed, and the poor root an outcast doing 
the 44 tramp ” foot-sore. 
High-class cultivators in our northern counties have warmed their Vine- 
borders by means of hot-water pipes, but the effect has often proved like 
that of warming a church, where the preacher was cold—much good coal 
wasted. In the zone or belt of climate where the Vine succeeds in the 
open air, the foliage and the feeders have their heat meted out to them; 
and the comparative coolness of the feeders, and their supply of moisture, 
may be said to be their sum of happiness. But however happy these feeders 
may be in their present locality, they cannot remain there, for they must 
travel. Whoever has watched closely aerial roots, will comprehend the movements 
of terrestrial ones, and although he may not see their mode of working, 
yet he must provide their travelling equipage, for they will go downward 
for moisture like a well-sinker, and run ahead and right and left in search 
of crude manure convertible into food. The action of a distant root upon its 
foliage seems to be like the lightning’s flash, if it be not identical with that 
marvellous agency, for surely there is a force able to pierce the clod and make 
a way for the sponge-like bodies that are the forerunners of the roots, if they are 
not the roots themselves. The chemical character of loam, or clay, or fuller’s- 
earth, enables these substances to disinfect manures that may come in contact 
with them, and in so doing, a mild and healthy medium is got for the roots to 
run into. Hence the rich bone-manure and turf of loamy soil have done such 
wonders in the way of Vine-borders, where whole dunghills would have failed. 
