THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, October 18, 1859. 
33 
house a few doors from Captaiu Hopkins’s, and the 
! aptain will explain his practice, and the state of his 
orders first to the British Bornological Society ; and 
diat remains for me to say on his part is that the Vine 
lildew visited his plants last year; for thefirstandlasttime 
et us hope. He took down all his Vines this last winter 
r spring, and twice painted the wall with a mixture of 
ulphur, lime, and soot, leaving it a soft grey colour ; and 
.is Vines took to their usual vigour, and no insect or 
lildew came near them sintie. He also thinned his 
hoots considerably, and trained the young ones on 
Loare’s system in such, numbers as put him aud them 
it the top of the tree the first season ; and I attribute the 
main cause of his success to the ample surface of vigorous 
foliage thus obtained, to his keeping his rods at a good 
distance apart, and discarding all laterals as they appear. 
Two days after our visit I sent a commissioner to 
■eport the state of the great mother Vine at Hampton 
Court, and the bunches were not quite so ripe there as 
from the cuttings of the same in Capt. Hopkins’s garden 
>n the open wall. Mr. Donald, of the flower gardens 
.here, went round with my envoy, and kindly showed 
iverything under his hands. The best flower-bed in the 
garden was then a bed with one half Mangles’ Variegated 
Geranium, and one half variegated Periwinkle. 
My Esperiones were much the same as those I showed 
in Willis’s Booms. Last year they were better, but 
this season they were back to the old tune through 
my own doings. The Vine divides into two equal parts 
to pass up each side of a window. A large branch 
from one side I took in through the place of a pane 
of glass to my minimum conservator} 7 , and the Grapes 
inside were in bloom ere the buds of the outside part 
had much advanced, and the consequence was, that the 
flow of sap went readier in under the glass, owing to 
the more strength inside, and by Midsummer day those 
outside were three weeks behind their average work ; but 
as I never stop a shoot, before a bunch, out of doors, as 
long as there is room for it, up to ten or fifteen joints, nor 
allow a lateral to expand a leaf at all, merely leaving one 
joint leafless for fear of accident to the shoots ; when 
the greater surface of leaves outside came to their work¬ 
ing age, they, in their turn, drew more of the sap their 
own way, and the inside Grapes suffered till the shoots 
outside were stopped, and the balance of flow was thus 
restored. The Grapes inside were early and delicious 
but not better looking than common ones. 
Ho trick or puzzle could be detected from first to last. 
The ground had no manure for the last forty years. The 
immediate border is a concreted open yard, except the 
corner where the Vine is planted, aud the yearly supply 
of coals is put there, in June, in each year; but a 
draining-pipe six inches in diameter saves the stem from 
the pressure of the coals, aud to pour in such quantities 
of good soakage as an old gardener like me delights to 
see his Vines enjoy. 
The secret of growing good Grapes out of doors is not 
to allow one leaf to shade another; to allow fruit only 
on the young wood of last year; to stop all the laterals 
at the first joint, and to pick off the leaf from the joint as 
soon as one can get hold of it; also, to have every shoot 
stopped right for the season by the first week in August, 
and, from the end of May to the beginning of September, 
to keep the roots in one continual soak of rich liquid 
manure. Stroug soap suds being, apparently, the very 
best for the Grape Vine, that, and the house pails, and a 
weekly sweeping from the necks of ckimnies in a large 
tub of soft water, are all my Vines receive or require ; 
and although I have been most completely beaten in my 
favourite branch of the craft by Capt. Hopkins, I hold it 
a sound doctrine not to dose or doctor outside-Vines with 
any thing less lasting than crushed bones ; but to depend 
on hand-feeding while, and for the short while, each 
season, that the appetite is on at the roots, and over the 
broad surface of luxuriant foliage. 
Capt. Hopkins has adopted a better system than mine 
this season. He has separate Vines for his greenhouse, in¬ 
stead of halving it as I did, and as I shall not do again. 
He trains his Vines under glass on Hoare’s system, and 
his Grapes prove how well the system answers. But he 
has dipped into the plan much more boldly than I have. 
He has a large Vine of the Black Frontignac, from Con¬ 
stants, where the celebrated Constantia wine is made at 
the Cape of Good Hope. The vineyards there were his 
half-way, and his house of call to, or from, India; and 
some parts of his success may be attributed to what he 
may have seen at these foreign vineyards. His Constan¬ 
tia Grape has a large crop of fine fruit w r hich will ripen 
this season, and most seasons. His garden is a perfect 
model of high keeping, his Boses in particular; all his 
beds and borders are edged with Hogg’s edging tiles, 
which drain the walks, and keep everything in its place. 
They have been down some years, and not one of them 
has ever yet suffered from frost or fiarm of any kind. 
His Ivy wall is a model of our highest art, and his speci¬ 
men Geraniums are, some of them, over twelve years of 
age, just like those I mentioned from Bulham Palace. 
A Passijiora racemosa, the common blue Passion- 
Flower, facing the Vines, has the finest stem I ever saw. 
It is a clean, clear, shining stem seven feet high, and as 
smooth and straight as a gun barrel, and many inches 
round. From this a host of running shoots rise to a 
great height, and then fall down gracefully over them¬ 
selves, as at the colonnade at the Crystal Palace. It is 
one whole sheet of bloom all the season, and now hangs 
in fruit and blossom. 
To show one instance, out of many, of how the love of 
gardening increases with our years—our guide, the Cap¬ 
tain’s father, now in his eightieth year, inquired of us 
diligently if we thought the seeds would ripen, as he 
longed to have young Passion-flowers of his own rearing. 
The propagating-liouse is his own invention, and is on 
the principle of the Waltonian Case. It is placed at one 
end of the greenhouse, ranging with the front glass, and 
behind it are the potting-shed, tool-house, and laboratory. 
A separate fire in the potting-shed heats a coil of gas 
pipes, one leg being the flow, and one the return, from a 
large tank made of zinc, with raised edges all round, the 
edges are open as the tank to hold water, and tan, or sand, 
or sawdust may be used to plunge cutting-pots in. 
Mr. Hopkins says Verbenas do better from autumn 
cuttings, full in the open air, than by all the other methods 
put together; and he showed us specimens which he 
ordered to be put in, after the stock was struck off, in 
order to convince a young idea, who, like my worthy 
friend, “would not believe one word ” about Verbenas 
striking out of doors ; but there they were, and the 
Pomological people will have, or may have, the benefit of 
the young aspirant’s doubts. 
But Captain Hornby himself ought to have been there 
to see the happy family of Captain Hopkins, his dogs, 
his pigeons, and his breeds of fowls eating out of the 
same dish. I had seen the first of the Cochin-China 
breed at the Messrs. Sturgeon’s, at shows and sales in all 
their varieties and moods ; but I never saw any to equal 
Captain Hopkins’s, or which come near them; but then 
consider the exactness, and the cleanliness on board a 
man-of-war, or an East Indiaman, and nothing ever 
afloat could exceed those rules for cleanliness and for 
prompt action, by which this family of feather is made so 
happy, so healthy, and so well paying as they really are 
and have been for years past. 
I did not ask this sight for the high commissioner from 
the Pomological, as fie was desirous to visit the Ex¬ 
perimental Garden, where we found the family from 
home, then down at the seaside ; but everything was as 
clean and as much in its place as if they were at home, 
except the conservatory and the mansion. The pot and 
tub-plants of the former were out airing, and ail the fur¬ 
niture in-doors was topsy-turvy, preparatory to that 
