446 
ON THE SHANKING OF GRAPES. 
rounded,, as well as every crevice about tbe building, so that fresh air 
might freely enter at all times ; and, when he began forcing, to keep 
good fires, to enable him to give plenty of air at all times, to give health 
and strength to the trees. 
All this was done two years ago, and last year the vines made great 
progress, and gave a fair sprinkling of fruit. This vear they were still 
better, and the Hamburghs bore a full crop. Everything went on well 
till about three weeks or a month back, when, just as the family re¬ 
turned from a summer tour, (the vinery having been forced late, and the 
crop kept back, to meet the owner’s return,) the gardener observed 
that shanking had commenced among the thickest of the crop of 
Hamburghs, but not among the same kind where the crop was 
moderate. 
/ 
The old friend was again in requisition to account for the pheno¬ 
menon ; but he could only shake his head, and admit, with Mr. Staf¬ 
ford, that it was inexplicable ; for, in this case, the trees are not young, 
so as to be wanting in that matured principle which one writer on the 
subject considers necessary to perfect fruit;—it cannot be the cold and 
damp of the autumn, nor any difference in the soil or situation, because 
all the trees of the kind are not equally affected. Seeing that the most 
prolife trees are most hurt, it would appear to be a consequence of 
weakness, were it not that there are many perfectly sound bunches in 
the midst and upon the same shoots with the defective ones. The 
same objection applies to the assumed cause, an over-moist or steamy 
atmosphere, scalding, as it 'were, the footstalks of the berries, and 
causing; them to shrink and die. 
That the change from the acetous to the saccharine quality of the 
fruit is a crisis in the progress of the plant cannot be denied; but 
this being a chemical rather than a physical change, requiring (one 
would think) a negative rather than any positive effort of the organiza¬ 
tion, we cannot conceive that a non-effort should cause debility. It is 
very feasible, however, to imagine that, as soon as the berry is perfect as 
to maturity, it ceases to require further aid from the system; and it is 
likely, as Mr. Stafford says, a renovated action takes place in the growth 
of the tree, as scon as the fruit have ceased to demand their wonted 
supply of nutrition. 
No one, we believe, has ever noticed the defect of shanking in the 
open air. Mr. Stafford admits this, and gives his reason how it hap¬ 
pens that exposed vines are exempt from the malady, namely, their 
never arriving at that stage of maturity ’which subjects the bunches to 
suffer from a change of quality in the juices of the fruit. This may be 
so ; still the circumstance happening only under artificial treatment of 
