324 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
September 
trophy when we got them over first from South Ame¬ 
rica. The way to pronounce Cue word is to put the 
stress, or the accent, on the •dipthong, ce, but many 
people in the country put the accent on the o, which 
is a vulgar way—just like pu tting the accent on the 
o in Ipomea instead of on the e. It is the next thing 
to low breeding to pronounce these names wrong, and 
I am always sorry when I hear respectable people 
say a name in a wrong accei it; and, yet, how are the 
mass of the people to learn 'now to say them properly 
unless they are taught ? We gardeners learn them 
from books, and there are regular laws which govern 
these things, like the rules in grammar, but classical 
scholars alone can apply them properly. 
D. Beaton 
HOTHOUSE DEPARTMENT. 
Vines in Late Houses, Vines in Pots. —This sub¬ 
ject is urgently presented to our notice this week by 
the inquiries of correspondents, or we would have 
allowed at least the latter part of our heading to have 
remained in abeyance until the commencement of 
another year. What we say now will be applicable 
to vines in both conditions. Vines in late houses 
will now require considerable attention. The fruit 
will be fast ripening, and the great thing is not only 
to secure and preserve it, but to look forward and 
see that the wood is rapidly maturing for the secur¬ 
ing of a crop the following year. This ripening or 
maturing of the wood can ondy be obtained by such 
an exposure to heat and air that the juices will be¬ 
come highly elaborated, and the wood hard yet 
plump from the circumference to the centre. All 
other things being equal, the stronger the wood, pro¬ 
vided it is thus matured, the more fruitful it will be. 
Hence good grapes are frequently produced from 
small weakly wood, and poor grapes from that which 
is strong and rampant; but in the one case the wood 
was like heart of oak, in the other soft and porous as 
a willow. During the season of growth, and until 
the last swelling of the berries is over, and especially 
in vines not over strong, it is of importance to give 
the lateral shoots the permission of growing, so far 
as your space will allow, and it does not interfere 
with due exposure to the sun of the principal leaves; 
because such growth above will secure a similar ex¬ 
pansion of the absorbing feeding roots below. But 
now growth is a secondary matter; the perfecting 
and maturing of what has already grown is the first 
consideration to be attended to, therefore every ap¬ 
pendage must be gradually removed, except the pri¬ 
mary leaves that retain the principal buds in their 
axils, By-and-by, in late houses, or even now, the 
buds on the ends of the rods and shoots which you 
intend cutting off in winter may be picked out with 
a penknife, and loug rods may have some of the 
weaker buds thinned out, but in all cases the leaves 
must remain so long as there is a particle of green 
about them, and thus the secretions formed will be 
stored more plentifully in the beds that remain. 
We are quite aware of the fact that “there are 
chiels amang us takin’ notes,” and that is just what 
we like. We feel a thousand times more pleasure in 
addressing such persons than in writing for those 
who would take without thought our mere assertion 
as any ground for their practice. In gardening, as 
well as in a more important matter, it is right to try 
all things, and then only to cleave to that which is 
good. We would wish you, therefore, not to base 
your operations on mere practical routine, but on 
great principles. But, then, how apparently contra¬ 
dictory are these principles 1 Every exponent of an 
opposition doctrine has his principles, on which he 
fully relies. Yes; and therefore you must not first 
repose on, but try them, by practice, by science, by 
plain common sense. It was never intended we 
should jump by intuition to right and just conclu¬ 
sions. Mind was given for the purpose of reasoning, 
analizing, determining; bodily powers were booned 
to enable us to carry on and test results; and a grea t 
source of enjoyment it is to know and to feel that in 
this employment aright of head and hands our great 
happiness is to be found. Well, then, to go on. 
Some look upon laterals, in any case, as so many 
blood-thirsty robbers, that are depriving the stem of 
its support and nourishment. We do not. The more 
numerous and extended the branches of a tree, the 
more stout and bulky its timber. Pruning, however 
judiciously performed, does not produce more weight 
of timber in the aggregate, but it concentrates that 
weight into one bole, and into the most useful and 
most desirable form. Those gentlemen who lately, 
in some of our periodicals, recommended in all cases 
the free growth of the laterals of the vine, were not 
much in the wrong so far as they looked to the mere 
increase of the bulk of the stem, but we think that 
they forgot that fruit-producing qualities were, in the 
case of vines in houses, of much more consequence 
than the production of timber. For promoting fruit¬ 
fulness, fewer and larger leaves would be more im¬ 
portant than a mass of smaller ones, shaded and 
shading one another. Hence though advocating the 
retention of laterals in such circumstances as we 
have referred to, yet we practicals seldom give them 
free scope for growing, but stop them at the first 
joint, and then again at the second, &c., and thus 
fewer but larger leaves are retained, and we gradually 
shorten and ultimately remove these laterals after 
the fruit is ripe wherever they would in the least 
shade the principal leaves and buds. We consider 
this much preferable to having long slender shoots 
dangling about where their supply of sun was the 
most moderate. 
We once saw a house so managed that it was almost 
impossible to walk in it. The rods were tied to the 
wires near the roof in the usual way, and the laterals, 
never touched, were hanging in festoons almost to 
the floor. We were told that it was a new scientific 
system! Now, with all due deference to such experi¬ 
mentalists, we would question the propriety of such 
a system even for sound and healthy wood-making 
merely. The poor laterals in a house thickly planted 
would only now and then receive a stray ray of light; 
they might, therefore, be viewed as robbers , for if they 
kept green at all, it would be more from borrowed 
elaborated juices, formed in other parts of the plant, 
than from that which they themselves had an oppor¬ 
tunity of assimilating. Asa case in point, I met some 
time ago with a writer in a gardening and agricultural 
periodical, who tried to demonstrate the absurdity of 
cutting or removing the runners from strawberry- 
plants, at least before the winter, contending that 
each runner added to the strength, and consequently 
the fruitfulness of the parent plant. We wish Mr. 
Errington had been at his elbow; for the company 
present was almost entirely confined to amateurs, some 
of whom were evidently smitten with the scientific 
philological verbiage, and looked as much as to say, 
“You practicals have hitherto been leading us a regular 
wild-goose chase.” It is seldom that we meet with 
error solely and alone ; it always manages to get a 
little truth blended with it, and it is this that makes 
it at once savoury and dangerous. The error consists 
