THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN'S COMPANION. —-June 17,1800. 205 
be pleasantly dispensed with ; as, for the sake of experi- 
. ment, the long rod, the short rod, the short spur, and 
i having no spur at all, hut cutting clean off to the old 
; wood, were equally fertile in showing fruit in abund¬ 
ance. Have healthy roots near the surface, free from 
a superabundance of moisture, especially at an early 
i period; and though you may not have such huge in¬ 
dividual bunches, and parasol-like leaves, as when the 
roots are deeper, you may always foretell a crop, unless 
a monster one should be so allowed to remain as to 
weaken the powers for fruitfulness for another year. 
This is an evil we are all liable to, especially when 
Grapes are required; not now and then on especial 
'occasions, but every day from the time they ripen. 
I fear that our correspondent will say that I am giving 
a roundabout statement, instead of meeting directly his 
case. I often find, however, that an unvarnished nar¬ 
ration of facts is fertile in suggesting ideas of action 
in similar circumstances. Although it is possible the 
flag-stones so securely jointed may have proved the 
inciting cause, I do not consider them to be the 
ultimate reason of the evil of which he complains. Be¬ 
fore doing so, I should have required to know something 
of the width, and depth, and material of the border, 
and how these flagstones themselves were situated, 
whether on the incline or on the level, and in either 
case what remedy was taken to convey away the water 
that fell upon them, so that it did not all find its way 
into the border at one place longitudinally, instead of 
falling equally over it. I have sometimes seen such 
attempts made to keep part of a border dry that abso¬ 
lutely made a part wetter than it naturally would have 
been, just as I have seen a man putting a spout round 
his cottage to catch the rain from the roof, and having 
collected it into one or two parts, allow it there, for want 
of suitable drains, to sink into the foundations of the 
house, and rise again in the shape of damp walls through 
the whole building. 
. There is just one thing—allowing all the particulars to 
be quite correctly stated—that rather damps me in coming 
to a definite conclusion, namely, the roots being rotted 
and decayed close under the flagstone. Three questions 
here present themselves:—1st. Is it likely there is any 
thing prejudicial to vegetation, such as magnesia, in that 
flagstone? 2ndly. Is it quite a fact that the roots are 
black and decayed, and you have not rather looked upon 
some of the decayed fleshy parts of strong rootless 
of last year? 3rdly. Was the soil very dry or very 
wet? In either case, if satisfied the roots are de¬ 
caying, the flags should be removed. I should, from 
! my own experiments, have been led to expect good, 
i healthy roots there, more especially if, in addition to 
the inciting causes of heat by conduction in summer, 
i these stones were kept warm in winter, and especially 
; in spring, by protecting material. If this had been the 
case, and the other roots near the surface, you might 
| have lacked great luxuriance ; but you would also have 
lacked tendrilled bunches. If, as I suspect, the water 
from these flags has got to the roots of the Vines, either 
by immediate percolation, or absorption by capillary 
attraction, that will sufficiently account for the evil. If 
this evil has appeared only recently, the late cold and 
continued rains would be sufficient to account for it. 
The plant became charged with watery juices, and the 
young fruit was the first thing to suffer. The whole 
description exactly tallies with what came under my 
experience many years ago. I have not the slightest 
hesitation in stating my conviction, that the unfortunate 
symptoms in this caseai'e owing to the roots, as a whole, 
being in a deep, wet, and cold condition. 
Perhaps it would be as well to remove the flagstones 
at once. I would have unhesitatingly advised doing so, 
and covering with rich compost, it' the Vines showed 
signs of weakness. Any little hesitation in the matter 
proceeds from the consideration of the fact, that they 
ai-e already there, and may serve some ornamental 
or useful purpose in front of the house; and also a still 
more selfish one, that they might serve, in some mea¬ 
sure, to test the surface concreting theoi’y. All things ' 
considered, I would prefer a little manure, or rich com- i 
post, over roots, in preference to the stones, for the 
summer; though, if there was no peculiar, as yet unac- ' 
countable, reason for the roots decaying beneath them, 
I do not place much of the blame on their shoulders, 
farther than this—that, not getting moisture at the 
surface, the roots were enticed into greater depths. 
The stones disposed of according to the judgment of 
the proprietor, the immediate thing to do is to get rid of 
superabundant moisture by seeing that there is a drain, 
say, four feet in depth, or considei'ably below the roots 
of the Vines. The clearing out of this will enable you 
to examine the l-oots of the Vines, and to judge whether 
more is necessary to deprive them of any chance of 
stagnant moisture. If the main roots are from fifteen 
to eighteen inches from the surface, you may rely on 
this drain to do your wishes, with the assistance of the 
border exposed to the sun all the summer, and kept 
moist and mulched to encourage the roots upwards, and 
a little extra fire to harden the wood in the autumn. 
If the main roots lie two feet and onwards from the 
surface, and the soil is naturally retentive of moisture, 1 
would not trust to this drain alone to remedy the evil, j 
but would insert cross drains, and carefully raise the 
roots, and plant them again nearer tho surface in fresh 
soil. * I 
I shall, ere long, have to state how one of our ablest 
gardeners cut down, and root pruned, and elovated tho 
roots of a Vinery in June, 1855, and now has a heavy j 
crop of fine fruit. The doing such things belongs to 
the initiated, who know how to take advantage of every 
move, and the smallest slip in judgment or management 
is nearly impossible. To the comparatively uninitiated, 
but who can give moderate attention and care, the best 
time for raising carefully the roots of such a Vinery would 
be the end of autumn, when the wood is approach- • 
ing maturity, and the leaves are yet green, though 
giving the faintest trace of a brown tint. If the roots 
are taken up carefully, replanted in sweet soil, and the 
leaves kept from flagging by shading and syringing, 
roots will be plentifully formed before winter. If even 
this is too much trouble, as soon as the leaves arc 
browned is the next best time ; and then, though shading 
may mostly be dispensed with, the roots would get on 
better if warmth was retained about them by covering 
the soil with litter, so as to keep a medium temperature, 
for some time, of 55° to 00°. Keeping the border dryish 
at such a time by throwing off the winter rains will 
greatly assist the rooting. By such modes I feci confi¬ 
dent that tendrilled bunches will be a rare occurrence, 
should this coiTespondent report progress. It. Fisii. 
Early Swarm of Bees. —C. M. had a large swarm of 
Bees safely hived on the 2ist of May, at Didsbury, near 
Manchester. She merely mentions it, becauso they were 
so late last year, every one was complaining. 
FLORISTS’ FLOWERS. 
THE PETUNIA. 
It is now nearly thirty years since I visited a small j 
nursery near Leeds, in Yorkshire, for the purpose ol i 
seeing a new plant tliat had leaves like a dwarf Tobacco- j 
plant, and flowers like a Convolvulus, of a purple colour! 
Though so long ago, I shall never forget the inteuse 
pleasure the sight afforded me. That plant was the j 
Petunia phcenicea, introduced from Buenos Ayres in j 
