THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, October 20, 1857. 
WEEKLY CALENDAR. 
D 
M 
D 
W 
OCTOBER 20—26, 1857. 
Weather near London in 1856. 
Sun 
Rises. 
Sun 
Sets. 
Moon 
R.& S. 
Moon'a 
Age. 
Clock 
af. Sun. 
Day of 
Year. 
Barometer. 
Thermo. 
Wind. 
Rain in 
Inches. 
20 
21 
22 
23 
24 
25 
26 
Tu 
W 
Th 
F 
S 
Son 
M 
Chrysanthemum Creticum. 
Linaria. 
Stock Gillifiower. 
Physalis. 
Buphthalmum. 
20 Sunday after Trinity. 
Tuberose. 
30,181—30.143 
30.290—30.180 
30.308—30.282 
30.417—30.304 
30.484—30.411 
30.471—30.444 
30.424—30.365 
63— 39 
64— 36 
68-42 
62—50 
58—39 
56—26 
52—25 
E. 
S.W. 
E. 
S.W. 
N.E. 
E. 
E. 
01 
_ 
35 a. 6 
36 
38 
40 
42 
43 
45 
55 a. 4 
53 
51 
49 
47 
45 
43 
5 21 
5 49 
6 25 
7 16 
8 21 
9 36 
10 54 
3 
4 
5 
6 
7 
8 
3 
15 8 
15 18 
15 27 
15 35 
15 43 
15 49 
15 56 
293 
294 
295 
296 
297 
298 
299 
Meteorology of the Week.— At Chiswick, from observations during the last twenty-eight years, the average highest and lowest 
temperatures of these days are 57-2°, and 40.3°, respectively. The greatest heat, 73°, occurred on the 21st, in 1830 ; and the lowest cold 20° 
ou the 21st, in 1842. During the period 92 days were fine, and on 104 rain fell. ’ ’ 
PRUNING THE VINE. 
. 
T>vo or three and forty years since a new walled 
garden was made on the site of an old vineyard in 
Herefordshire, towards the south-east corner of the 
county, and within a rifle shot of the spot where a 
sportsman is said to have stood and sent his dogs over 
the hedge into Gloucestershire, where they put up a 
covey of partridges, at which he discharged both barrels, 
and a brace of them/ell dead in Worcestershire. Mr. 
i Grierson, of Ledbury, who retired from gardening in 
1830, was the planner and planter of that new garden, 
and among other things he planted an Esperione Grape 
Vine, which he received from the late Mr. Williams, of 
Pitmaston, near Worcester, the best authority at that 
time for such things after Mr. Knight, of Downton Castle. 
This Vine was the only authenticated one of that 
kind that I ever knew. It was also the most productive 
Vine I had ever seen. The border in which it did so 
well was never dunged. Mr. Grierson told me that he 
merely trenched the border, and between his experience 
and my own knowledge I am enabled to state that for 
the first five and twenty years this Vine, or rather, the 
Vine border, had no particle of manure, solid or liquid, 
and yet it was one of the most productive Vines in the 
country at that time. I had charge of it myself for 
several years, having succeeded Mr. Grierson. Mr. 
Moss was the gardener to Earl Somers at Eastnor 
Castle, Mr. Beach was with Lord Beauchamp at Mad- 
dersley Court, and Mr. Brown was gardener to Mr. and 
Lady Emily Foley at Stoke Edith Park, and several 
other good judges of the amateur class about Worcester, 
Gloucester, and Cheltenham knew the Vine very well, 
and they all acknowledged its superiority. Some of 
the gardeners were helped year after year with contri¬ 
butions from it to mix with their own hothouse Grapes 
for the dessert, for the highest of our aristocracy too, 
but it was never detected to be an outdoor Grape only. 
I have known it to produce five dozen bunches 
averaging one pound and a half each, and from four to 
five hundred hunches of less weight. In 1835 I sold the 
crop of this Vine for thirty shillings to the butler of 
Col. Drummond, then at Underdown, near Ledbury, 
and now of the Boyce, near Dyrnock, and he told me 
afterwards that, after stripping them of the stalks, and 
casting out wasp-eaten ones and all that he could not 
mash for wine, he weighed them, and found they cost 
him three farthings the pound. He can tell the same 
| tale if he is alive. I gave away shoots, layers, eyes, and 
“ coders ” of this Vine freely, and if any one can give me 
now a few eyes of this Vine, quite authenticated, I shall 
feel very much obliged. My reason for the request is, 
that there is not a man alive who can, or ever could, tell 
the difference between the fruit of the true Esperione 
and that of the Black Hamburgh, and from knowing 
there are plenty Esperiones in England which are not 
j true, my own experimental Vine being one of the latter, 
a fact which I only discovered since I mentioned the 
experiment about pruning the Vine. 
There is one way, and only one, by which the 
Esperione may be known from the Black Hamburgh. 
It ripens out of doors five or six weeks before the Black 
Hamburgh. It will also ripen to the north of Balmoral 
against a south wall in a season like this. In 1826 it 
ripened to my own knowledge at Tochabers, near 
Gordon Castle, in Elgin, and in Forres, in the same 
shire of Moray, and at Inverness. 
My Vine here has had all the advantages of a London 
climate, and my own care into the bargain, but no dung 
in any shape from the beginning, and still a first-rate 
gardener in Oxfordshire had his Esperione ripe five 
weeks before mine this season, and what is more to the 
purpose, he has thirty or forty examples of the very 
experiment which I have been trying since 1852. He, 
also, and his employer offered to send me branches of 
the Vine with fruit on, carriage free to London, for me 
to exhibit in corroboration of the experiment, and he 
was so good as to say that I may give his name and 
authority in the summing up. 
Another gardener in the west of England, and one 
who is allowed to be among the best gardeners in the 
kingdom, told me that my No. 4 bunch, that with the 
longest shoot, ought to be the worst of the lot. Another 
gardener of equal celebrity, and author of a book on 
the Vine, told me that this very number ought to be 
the best, all but one point, which he named. Some tell 
me No. 2 should be the best, but the preponderance is 
in favour of No. 3. Another gardener in the west has 
been experimenting for some years on the exact experi¬ 
ment which I have tried, so as to “ account for what he | 
believed to be his own fault.” I wish this one would < 
allow me to give his name also. Mr. Errington is for | 
No. 3 to be the best. Mr. Fish and Mr. Robson are ' 
both for No. 2 generally, and for No. 3 under particular j 
circumstances, but they did not tell me so—I make it 
out from their writing. I can tell which of the bunches 
would be thought the best by any one who has written on 
the Vine for the last hundred years, but I wished for co¬ 
operation in a “ family manner,” and so named a few j 
first-rate gardeners, whose opinions I promised to keep | 
private if they wished. Most of them are for No. 3. 
Now that I am in possession of the facts from 
others which I wish to clear up by the experiment, 
and all being settled but the flavour of this or that 
bunch, and the cause why one bunch should be of a 
different flavour from the bunch before or behind it, 
I need not take the spurs along with the bunches to 
the fruit meeting of the Horticultural Society after j 
declining those from Oxfordshire. All that I shall have j 
to ascertain from the Judges there is, if there is any j 
difference of flavour in my four or five bunches to 
correspond with that difference which is stated by my 
correspondents. From a long experience in “ this way ” 
I am persuaded that no man can be a thoroughly in¬ 
dependent judge of his own production, therefore I 
shall not even taste a berry of these bunches till they 
are judged in Willis’s Rooms; but I can see already 
that a very important point will have to be experimented 
No, CCCCLXNIH. Vol. XIX. 
