COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, November 10, 185? 
78 THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND 
receive the light of a brilliant sun, all the fruit which 
such a plant may produce will ripen perfectly in a summer 
that is long enough .” That is the first axiom, and the 
italics are my own through all of them, that I may point 
to them more particularly. “ Naturally ” will not apply 
to a Vine growing in an artificially-made rich border; 
it is stimulated to make more leaves than are natural to 
it. “Favourable influences” mean, with us, no late 
spring frosts or very cold winds when the Vine is break¬ 
ing, or should be coming into leaf, and a long warm 
summer season like the one we have just gone thiough. 
“Brilliant sun” we never see, and “summer that is 
| long enough” is very seldom, it ever, an English sum¬ 
mer; therefore the first essential clause in this theory 
' has many valid exceptions in England. Secondly. If 
j all the leaves of a tree are exposed to such influences 
i all its fruit will advance as far towards ripeness as the 
length of the summer will admit of; it may be sour and ^ 
colourless, but that condition will be perfect of its kind. 
Thirdly. “ But if all the fruit which a healthy tree will 
show is allowed to set, and a large part of its leaves is 
abstracted, such fruit, be the summer what it may, will 
never ripen." 
“Allowed to set” means, here, allowed to remain on 
the tree, as the whole crop of Grapes out of doors in 
many places is allowed to go without thinning, and the 
summer dressing of the A T ines must of necessity “ ab¬ 
stract ” a large amount of leaves : such Grapes “ never 
ripen.” Fourthly. “ Therefore, if a necessity exists lor 
taking off a part of the leaves of a tree, a part of its fruit 
should also be destroyed.” This is the common practice 
of good gardeners, and the next proposition explains it. 
Fifthly. But although a tree may be able to ripen all the 
fruit it shows, yet such fruit will neither be so large nor 
so sweet, under equal circumstances, as it part of it is 
removed, because a tree only forms a certain amount of 
secretions; and if those secretions are divided among 
twenty fruits instead of ten, each fruit will in the former 
case have but half the amount of nutrition which it 
would have received in the latter case.” And sixthly, 
“ The period of ripening in the fruit will be* accelerated 
by an abundant foliage and retarded by a scanty foliage." 
We often hear it said that such a person is too theo¬ 
retical and not to be depended on; but there never was 
a greater misuse of our language. No man on earth 
was ever, or can ever be, too theoretical. The word 
theory means the true nature of things or thing, or any¬ 
thing, and the cause of effect can never be known too 
much to mortal man. What they mean is, that such 
and such a man is too hypothetical—too much given to 
surmising, or guessing, or taking things for granted 
without knowing their meaning or nature, or practical 
bearing. Theory is tfie perfection of human understand¬ 
ing, and if it is not so, it is not theory. We hear of unsound 
theory. There never was such a thing: what is not sound 
amounts not to theory. Then the question is this—Does 
the above constitute the theory of Vine culture ? I 
believe so, and I shall attempt to explain the mind and 
practice of gardeners on these principles, and reconcile 
if I mistake not, although the tenor of the correspond¬ 
ence anent my own experiment might very naturally 
lead the uninitiated portion of our readers to conclude 
that theory and practice were in direct opposition to 
one another, but I have no space to-day for this part of 
my subject. 1 shall, therefore, finish with a “true and 
particular account” of my experiment and the result. 
Between 1829 and 1830, or say seven years in the 
prime of life, 1 carried on extensive and some very ex¬ 
pensive experiments on the Vine for an ardent physiolo¬ 
gist and a good practical botanist, my employer, a friend 
and neighbour of the late Mr. Knight, of Downton 
Castle, with whom “ we ” were in constant correspon¬ 
dence. “Our” theory of the extraordinarily productive 
Esperione Vine which I told of the other day was, that 
one-half of its length and height was entirely free from 
fruit every year according to the style of pruning, which 
X explained. During these seven years and the next 
three years I learned all that I know ot the nature and 
practice of the Vine and its culture; also the nature 
and culture of bulbs all but two points; but I could ; 
not see a flower-bed then ; I could only look at it as 
others look at the moon. To look at a thing and to see 
the same thing are two very different operations. Well, 
I think I can now see flower-beds, bulbs, and Grapes, 
if I see nothing else in a garden—I am sure ot it in one 
sense but I can also foresee some things, and I foresaw j 
a difficulty which was sure to arise at V illis’s Rooms 
respecting my Grapes, and to prepare for it w r as the reason 
for “ bringing out” that article on the said Esperione at : 
the beginning of the week. The Esperione is from a selt- 
sown seed of the Black Hamburgh at Kensington, where 
it was pointed out to Mr. Aiton, one of the royal gardeners, 
who first brought it into notice as a more hardy Blade 
Hamburgh than its parent, and, to make it more accept- 
able, its raiser named it Esperione, the meaning ol 
which I never heard. Mr. Williams, of Pitmaston, 
received it from Mr. Aiton, and gave it to my employer j 
for his experiments, and for fiiteen or sixteen years 1 
neither he nor any other person who saw it could ! 
distinguish it, in any stage of its growth, Rom a Blade 
Hamburgh, except in its hardier constitution, which 
makes it three weeks or a month earlier than its parent. 
Last year my Grape ripened just as well as it did this 
season, and as well as I ever knew any Grape to ripen 
in the open air. As we shall see presently that made 
me believe that I had the true Esperione ; but 1 have 
altered my opinion of it from the experience of this 
season, when, if it were the Esperione, 1 ought to have 
had it ripe by the middle of September; but I will give 
it the benefit of one of the best clauses in my bill. Mr. 
Snow, gardener to Earl cle Grey, who is one ol the very 
best and most successful growers and exhibitors of fruit 
for the last twenty years, declared positively before nine 
experienced exhibitors and two first-rate nurserymen, ol 
whom Mr. Veitch was one, that my Grape is the 
Esperione; another of the gardeners as positively 
affirmed that it is the Blade Prince; another that it 
is certainly the true Blade Hamburgh ; and a fourth 
assured the rest it is nothing else but the Cambridge I 
Botanic Garden Grape, a kind which was first intro¬ 
duced, I think, in Findley’s “Guide to the Orchard.” j 
Each and all of them tasted the Grape, turned my best I 
bunch over and over, and held it up between him and the 
light, smacked his lips, and insisted on it that no other 
Grape than the kind he named could come to such 
perfection in the open air. 
But two hours previously to this, and before the 
general public were admitted, I had four of our best 
gardeners to examine my Grape, not one of whom 
would decide what kind it is. Three of them did not 
know th e Esperione ; the fourth said he did, and that 
mine was much more like a Blade Hamburgh than like 
the Esperione, therefore he must be unacquainted with 
the latter. One of them said the bloom and colour 
put him in mind of the Purple Constantia of the Cape, 
which is, or was, much grown at Welbeck; another said 
it was more like the Duke of Newcastle's Black Cluster, 
a kind I never heard of before. I had five bunches.(the 
best was just I lb. 1 oz.), and the shoot was fifty-two joints 
long; this was my bunch No. 4, being the fourth bunch j 
below the top bunch. The three bunches above it were 
stopped at one, two, and three eyes beyond the bunch, 
and they weighed just 40 ozs. between them. The four 
hunches on this shoot and two more bunches lower down 
were the same in every respect of colour, size, bloom, 
and flavour ; but when they began to turn colour No. 4 
was one week or nine days in advance.of the rest, but 
in the course of five weeks it had no more advantage than 
