ON THE SHRIVELLING OF GRAPES. 
243 
pots early in the last spring into an open border, placed the roots in a 
convenient situation, and laid the stem in a drill from six to three 
inches deep, permitting only a few of the upper buds to emerge from 
the ground. The plants pushed healthily, and being taken up in the 
autumn, masses of fibres were found at the point of every buried bud, 
tracing off to right and left, in very beautiful order. The old roots did 
not appear to have extended, and not one shoot had pushed upward 
from the layered stem. Mr. Mearns had not experimented for a suf¬ 
ficient time before he announced his discovery; he was in haste to 
reveal what he assuredly believed would prove a practice of eminent 
utility; and herein he erred, not however, to the effect of wilfully mis¬ 
leading his horticultural brethren and the practical amateur, but purely 
in as much as his enthusiastic zeal led him to anticipate too much. 
The world is ungrateful, and he has been subjected to much obloquy 
for merely a well-intended, premature solicitude to communicate know¬ 
ledge. But coiling, though it may and will fail generally to produce 
good fruit during the first year, is an admirable process for effecting 
the propagation of strong-rooted plants for pot culture. 
A vine of old or last year’s wood, coiled from three to four feet in a 
sixteen or twelve pot, one eye only being permitted to approach to 
within half an inch of the surface,—the whole, however, being covered 
with light vegetable earth, made open by bruised bones, and being well 
drained at bottom,—will push vigorously, and may produce a shoot 
twelve feet long, and nearly half an inch in diameter, in one season. 
Such a shoot, well trained, will support from six to twenty clusters 
(according to its kind and the shortness of its joints) in the second 
year. Does not such an announcement merit praise in lieu of con¬ 
tumely ? “ Palmarn qui meruit ferat: ” — we offer him our best 
thanks, while we unfeignedly regret the consequences of an over- 
hasty zeal. 
<&i\o<jo(pog. 
ON THE SHRIVELLING OF GRAPES. 
BY ME. W. DENVER. 
Battle Abbey , June 20, 1836. 
Dear Sir,—I n my former paper on the shrivelling of grapes, I pro¬ 
mised to say something more on that important subject; and as some 
of your readers seem to wish it, I feel in duty bound to do so. With 
this view, I solicit the assistance of all who have studied the nature of 
the grape vine, and have had opportunities of seeing this disease; for, 
let it be remembered, the subject is one that concerns both proprietors 
