number of year-old Muscat vines, cut back to about ten eyes some months previously, placed the stem near one side of the hamper, and spread out the roots like the fingers of an extended hand, covering up with the same sort of soil, and finishing with a good watering, placing a hamper against each of the pillars and training the young rods up the pillars. As this large house was only kept a little closer than a greenhouse, the vines made fine short-jointed canes. By the latter end of June we had finished cutting the grapes on the black Hamburgs that the vines in the hampers were destined to replace, when I removed them, and on the 1st of July had the border made up to the extent of 9 feet in width along the front of the house. Seats were made in the soil of the border for the hampers, whose bottoms were rotten by this time. The planks on which they were set enabled us, however, to move them in safety. The young canes were introduced through the front wall as the old ones had been. About three joints of the previous year's wood were laid in the soil, after having an incision made in it below each joint. (The danger to be apprehended from the attacks of fungi would now lead me to omit the incisions, especially where bottom-heat is to be applied.) The hampers were then cut away and removed, leaving the great round flat ball full of fine young roots, to be covered over with 4 inches of soil. The young canes were from 12 to 14 feet long, two from each plant, when planted. They did not receive the slightest check to their growth, but made splendid canes to the top of the house, and ripened thoroughly in the autumn. They would have yielded a good crop of grapes half-way up the house, in 1848, had they been allowed to do so. As it was, they were allowed to carry

two bunches to each rod, making four to each plant. In 1849 they bore twelve bunches on each rod, and in 1850 the heaviest crop of Muscats I ever saw, many of the bunches weighing 3 lb.; and up to 1860, when I saw them last, they have borne exceedingly heavy crops of fine grapes. Had I prepared a double set of vines in the same way, so as to have cropped one-half the first year, and then to have cut them out, the border and vines could have been renewed without the loss of a single crop. From this house I have more than once cut old grapes in March; on one occasion, on the 16th of that month.1

In March 1869, I received the following replies to queries I addressed to Mr Edlington2 about this Muscat house: "The roots of the Muscats have traversed the border 15 feet wide, passed underneath the walk at a depth of 2 feet, and are there as thick as walking-sticks; and they extend 60 feet into the asparagus brake beyond the walk, in which they seem to luxuriate amazingly. The vines are in fine health, and every year they bear enormous crops without a shanked berry." Mr Edlington further stated that he crops the vine-border proper with bedding-plants half-way across it, and that he believes it does the vines no harm. My own opinion is, that the case might be otherwise were the feeding roots of the vines confined to the original border, instead of enjoying a roving commission in the asparagus quarter. My beau-idéal of a vine-border would be one tacked on to a well-made asparagus plantation, where top-dressing was an annual event, and sufficient sun, air, and moisture could be obtained, yet the vine-roots never disturbed by digging or trenching; and no doubt this is

1 This house had a fine crop on the old vines when I saw it in May 1879. 2 Mr Edlington, an excellent gardener, has been dead some years.

one reason for the great and long-continued fruitfulness of the vines in question.

The only other case of this character which I shall describe, as founded on my own experience, was the raising of the roots of a house of vines in the gardens at Dalkeith in June 1855. It was evident that the roots of the vines in question had grown down to the subsoil, and I determined to raise them and lay them in new soil. On the 8th of June, after covering the glass of the house with a tarpaulin, I had a trench cut down right along the border, within 12 feet of the front of the house, and then cleared away all the old soil, and raised the roots close up to the front wall. We thus had the whole of the roots disengaged from the soil, as there was then no border inside the house. I had them laid as fast as possible into the new soil, and well watered. Their foliage all flagged and hung down; but I kept the house close, moist, and warm, and excluded all the direct rays of the sun effectually. The berries in the bunches were the size of peas, and for a few days they were quite wrinkled in their skins. At the end of a week the leaves began to turn up a little. I then took off the tarpaulin and put on a lighter shading of tiffany, and in the course of another week I removed this also and put on hexagon netting. In a month from the date of the operation they were perfectly recovered, and growing fast. They ripened 30 lb. of good grapes the same year, and in 1856 bore a splendid crop of fruit, and continued to do so for three subsequent years. The vines were, however, old, and had been pruned on the long-spur system, which rendered them unsightly. All our other vineries were planted with young vines in 1856, and in 1860 were in full bearing. Under these circumstances I was induced

to make arrangements for doing away with the old vines in question, but before doing so, determined to have one more crop off them as early as possible in 1861, and replant the house the same year. To hasten this, I removed a pine-pit no longer required in the house, the removal of the front wall of which gave access to the roots of the vines in the outside border through the arches of the front wall of the house. I then filled the interior of the house, previously occupied by the pit, with hot fermenting dung and leaves. This material was placed in close contact with the roots of the vines through the arches, and acted as a hot lining to the entire border. The outside surface of the border was covered with dry leaves and thatched. The house was started in this way on the 1st of September, and on the 1st of January 1861 we cut the first dish of grapes, exactly three months earlier than we cut from the same house the year before, though started at the same time, and treated in the same manner, with the exception of the hot lining to the roots. Seeing that the success of this experiment was so satisfactory, and finding, on examination, that a host of fine roots had established themselves in the lining as it cooled, I made up my mind to give them another trial, and the following summer I pruned them in July. In the end of August I put a quantity of hot fermenting dung and leaves on the top of the previous year's lining, so to speak; and we cut excellent grapes on the 1st of January 1862. The crop was nearly double that of the previous year; and in March the wood was perfectly ripe, and much stronger than I ever saw it in this house before. I need scarcely add that the sentence at one time recorded against them for their unsightliness has been revoked.

Some may consider that I have been tediously particular in my efforts to explain this case; but if so, they must excuse me on account of my anxiety clearly to establish the importance of bottom-heat for early-forced vines; and from my own experience in the case of these vines, as well as from theoretical reasoning, I have come to the conclusion that it is less destructive to the constitution of vines to begin forcing them in August than in October. My opinion on this subject has been endorsed by Dr Lindley, whose great eminence as a vegetable physiologist is universally recognised. In his remarks in a leading article in 'The Gardeners' Chronicle' for February 22, 1862, on an article on this subject which I communicated to the 'Florist and Pomologist' of that month, he says: "It is quite evident, as Mr Thomson points out, that the natural chemical advantages are all on the side of the earlier-forced vines. When started in August, they have before them three months of comparatively fine weather, which is of immense importance to them, and suffices for all the more critical periods of their development. When started in October to be ripe in March, the entire period of growth belongs to the most dreary and unpropitious part of the whole year; so that it would seem resting the vines in the hot dry months of summer-dryness being at that period the maturing agent and renewing the growth in August, so as to snatch as much as possible of the fine weather of autumn for all the earlier stages of growth, turns out, in practice as it does in theory, to be the proper course for producing new ripe grapes on New-Year's Day, and this with better results than would be obtained a couple of months later."