230 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, January 10, 1860. 
ever taken in the perfect state. This is not a solitary instance of 
Butterflies coming finer from home-bred pupae. A correspondent 
of the Entomologists' Intelligencer last year mentioned that he 
had bred Colias edusa from the egg, and he said the specimens 
were finer than any he had ever before seen. 
I do not know what Mr. Wighton means by “ class.” Fapilio 
Mcichaon and G. Ilhamni — which latter, I presume, is the 
“Yellow or Sulphur” Butterfly he alludes to—arc not in the 
same genus; nor, indeed, in the same sub-family. If ho means 
they ai’e both included in the class Insecta he is right; but to 
this meaning of class I should scarcely think he is alluding. 
AVhat Butterflies has Mr. Wighton seen or known as being 
bred from pupse dug up under trees in the heart of London ? I 
know of only one Butterfly which is said ever to pass into the 
pupa state under ground ; that is an Oak feeder, and Oaks will 
not exist in the heart of London.—R. B. P. 
THE WINES OF WOODSTOCK. 
“ What bliss to life can Autumn yield. 
If glooms, and showers, and storms prevail, 
And Ceres flies the naked field, 
And flowers, and fruits, and Phoebus fail ! 
Oh ! what remains, what lingers yet, 
To cheer me in the durk’ning hour ? 
The Grape remains! the friend of wit, 
In lore, and mirth, of mighty power. 
Haste—press the clusters, fill the bowl; 
Apollo ! shoot the parting ray: 
This gives the sunshine to the soul. 
This god of health, and verse, and day.” 
—Da. Johnson. 
“ Well —but, Sir,” taking the above lines only as evidence, 
the famous disputant had a clear eye for the country, notwith¬ 
standing the “shady side of Fleet Street;” and his heart must 
have been, sylvan inclined, seeking solace in London, by think¬ 
ing and writing those rural thoughts, some of which now 
occur to furnish me with a pleasant and appropriate text for 
my present paper; for I have eighteen gallons of new Grape 
wine working in the room where I am writing (October 28th), 
in a temperature ranging from 55° to 60°; and what with the 
perfume of the wine, and 32 lbs. of honey in process of running 
off from the comb in the same apartment, a pot pourri is 
forming for me, rich indeed. When I last wrote about Grapes 
in Tiie Cottage Gardener I said that the rector intended to 
send some samples of my wines to “ head-quarters ;” and I now 
hurry out his intention, having the fear of a New Zealander (not 
Macaulay’s), before me, who has subsequently promised in these 
pages to do the very same thing. Again, are there not the Grape- 
growers of Surbiton to fear, about leaving one in the lurch ? They 
are sure to press on to wine. Besides, I was “sent to Coventry ” 
at our Horticultural here this year, which was no very pleasant 
event—only, luckily, I held the wines in abeyance as a reserve 
force. Now, to try for renown further a-field; but auent the 
incitements. The wines would prove themselves all the better, 
had I deferred their onslaught for a season, owing to some of them 
being so recently recruited into the bottles. I do not aim at 
large bunches of Grapes now I am become a wine-maker (quantity 
of fruit is my object), or I should feel more than half emboldened 
to make a dash at the gauntlet Mr. Beaton threw down the 
other day, and try a tilt with him next year at the Pomological, 
even should “ Jericho ” prove one’s destination in consequence of 
the rash encounter! 
My Vines have produced this year 177 lbs. of well-ripened 
Grapes from 520 superficial feet of wall, and have ripened their 
bearing-wood for next year on the above space into the bargain. 
Analogous to this house-frontage Grape cultivation the Illus¬ 
trated London News for October 8th, 1858, tells us what some 
of our cousins in America are doing. “ A lady near Owensville, 
Clermont County, Ohio, writes to the Ohio Farmer that she has 
a Catawba Vine trained on her dwelling which has on it this 
summer 167 large bunches of Grapes, all sound, with no symp¬ 
toms of rot. This statement led our friend Michael Limon, of 
Boardman, to count the number of bunches growing on an 
Isabella Vine which he set a couple of years ago on his premises, 
and, to his surprise, he found upon it 274 bunches of large size! 
He had the curiosity, furthermore, to count the number of 
Grapes on some of the bunches, and found many of them ranging 
from sixty to seventy each, and one that went up as high as 
eighty-six Grapes to the cluster!”— Fronton (Ohio) Register. 
I have made no alteration in the system of groundwork strain¬ 
ing my wines from that which I stated in Nos. 161 and 165 for 
the year 1856, further than to note that the masons have just 
completed pointing with Portland cement an extra large under¬ 
ground tank for the purpose of saving the house sewage; and 
more, for the rector purchased in the early part of this year one 
of Read’s galvanised iron tanks, swung upon wheels, which is 
drawn about by our odd man for the purpose of collecting the 
washerwomen’s soapsuds to mix with the sewage, when it is ap¬ 
plied bountifully to the roots of the Vines, the fruit trees, and 
all growing crops; and the annual increasing benefits derived from 
this liquid manuring are so evident, that our neighbours have 
become quite spiteful to us. Seeing these things on a small scale, 
I cannot allow myself to think that the London Sewage Com¬ 
mittee will make the mistake of conveying all their main drainage 
into the sea. Lay “on” Mr. Meelii! Mr. Beaton “on!” and 
mother Earth and The Cottage Gardener will back you. 
In progress, I will now proceed to lay my wine-making practice 
open to my readers; and although much that I have to write 
may be already known to them, still I am sure, from experience, 
that the detailed operations of separate individual practice tend 
to diffuse general knowledge, however common the subject may 
be, and at any rate become due to the periodical whence prime 
benefits have been originally gained. 
As a means to the end, I will relate first in order the homely 
contrivances I make use of. They are utensils which in most places 
are to be found at hand, but which must be scrupulously clean. 
Scales to weigh Grapes; a garden-basket, the weight of which is 
known, to gather the Grapes ; a washing-stool; three washing- 
tubs, ten, fourteen, and eighteen gallons respectively; a five and 
seven-gallon cask ; two tw’o-gallon stone bottles ; two one-gallon 
ditto; bungs, pegs, and corks of sizes ; a stout piece of canvass, 
and some old jelly-bags ; a mallet, a pair of pincers, and a pair 
of cutting-pliers; a large white bason and a bread-pan; two 
large brown earthenware milk-pans, borrowed, pro tern., from the 
bee-hives, which they serve to shelter; one large stone mortar 
and a mahogany pestle; an iron lading-bowl; a short ladder, 
and two stout squared stakes about five feet each in length; a 
bucket, two large wooden spoons ; a tin funnel, a tin pint- 
measure, and two jugs, measuring from two quarts ; a colander, 
and a saecharometer, whereby there hangs a tale. In June, 
1856,1 decided to make the Rhubarb wine (sample No. 9) ; and 
to test the degrees of sweetness in its different stages, a Roberts’s 
saecharometer was sent for to an optician’s in London (Dixies, 
Bond Street), as being the cheapest instrument of that de¬ 
scription recommended for our purpose ; and down one came, per 
Great Western Railway, superscribed, “ glass with great care,”-—a 
very delicate instrument, price 6v., and found to be broken. In 
the following October I decided to mako the Grape w'ine (No. 1), 
and a saecharometer was again sent for, &c.; arrived super¬ 
scribed, &c., and was found to be, &c. Well, the makers might, 
for aught I know, be paying the Great Western Railway Com¬ 
pany a premium ; at any rate, I would trust to their tender 
mercies no more. In the following winter another was procured 
in London, which I brought down myself whole. For the three, 
a compromise of 10s. was effected with the optician ; so, including 
the carriage of the two unfortunates, 6s. 4 d. extra were paid by 
the possessor of one instrument for somebody’s negligence, which 
may be worth a. note of precaution. 
On the morning of the 21st of last October I thought it 
proper, from the glare and chilliness in the atmosphere, to make 
my vintage : and lucky it was that I did so, for the frosts of that 
and the three following nights arc not likely to be soon forgotten. 
The Grapes were then picked from their stalks into tubs, the 
White Siveetwaters by themselves, the Black Fsperiones by 
themselves: and the pestle and mortar being deposited on the 
washing-bench, having the fruit on one side and an empty tub on 
the other, bowl after bowl of Grapes was crushed in the mortar 
-—not by a vertical jam, but by the pestle worked with a circular 
horizontal motion, and using sufficient force only to macerate the 
pulp without smashing the pips, for in the latter case they are 
thought to impart an unpleasant roughness to the wine. The pulp 
is emptied from the mortar with the bowl, into the tub, and so 
on till the bruising process is over. Where a pestle and mortar 
cannot be had, the Grapes can be hand-crushed in the colander 
made to rest over the tubs. The latter, containing the now- 
called “must,” is placed in a temperature of about 55° to 60°, 
and is well stirred twice daily with tbc'w'ooden spoon ; and, at the 
expiration of three days, an empty tub is placed with either the 
short ladder or squared stakes resting upon it, and over that the 
colander, into which the must is ladccl by degrees, and the juice 
well pressed away by force of hands from the skins and pips, which 
