LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 
49 
before told you, every particle of information which I can pick up 
during my sojourn here is particularly interesting to myself, I hope the 
trouble I am imposing on you of reading dry practical matter relative 
to gardening or other rural affairs, will not be deemed irksome, especi¬ 
ally if you be pleased to consider that gardening and farming are sources 
whence flow most of the substantial gratifications of a country seat. 
Indeed, without these, the most attractive and beautiful dispositions of 
the landscape gardener are no better than a set of fine pictures hung 
upon a wall; and that garden artist or architect who designs the one 
without a special regard to the others, must have a very imperfect idea 
of his business; in short, is altogether unfit for the profession. 
At the end of my last we were just about to enter the hot-houses; 
the first, at the east end of the range, is the pinery, a building 
calculated to fruit about four dozen of plants. It is heated by a smoke 
flue and common furnace, placed in a shed behind. Some pains have 
been bestowed on building the flue, in order to equalise the evolution 
of heat. The first part, which crosses the east end, is built with 
building bricks on bed; the front with the same on edge ; the farther 
end, and three turns against the back wall, are built with paving 
bricks on edge. The cross flues are carried through the front wall, 
but stopped there by a stone slab, for removal, to cleanse the flue 
of soot. The front and back flues are similarly fitted with stones 
at the end. The bark pit is four feet and a half deep, surrounded 
with a thin wall of brick-work, and finished with a stone curb. 
Tanners’ bark is the fermenting material used in the pit, and is 
sometimes mixed with oak leaves to qualify the heat. 
Single grape vines are trained under each rafter, and managed in 
the alternate long-shoot manner ; that is, each tree has, during 
the summer, only two branches or shoots; one bearing fruit, and 
the other shooting up alongside to take its place, and do a like 
duty in the following summer. When the first has yielded its 
crop, it is cut away, and its substitute takes the place. x4t the 
commencement of the next year’s growth, a successor is chosen from 
among the buds which spring from the head of the old stem, and 
as near to the base of its predecessor as possible. Soon as the choice 
is made, all the other buds offering themselves at the same time are 
rubbed off, in order that the fruitful branch and young aspirant may 
engross the whole vigour of the root. During its summer growth 
it is carefully kept in place, and regularly divested of tendrils, and 
the points of the laterals, which are pinched off above their first 
joint. The young shoot, so treated, rises to the full length 
VOL. V. —NO. LVI. 
H 
