012-30-38 JA TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH AND QUEENSBERRY, K. G. ETC. TO WHOSE MUNIFICENT LIBERALITY AND PATRONAGE HORTICULTURE OWES SO MUCH, This Small Volume IS DEDICATED BY HIS GRACE'S MOST OBEDIENT SERVANT, THE AUTHOR. Thomp 12-28-35 37391 PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION. In common with most gardeners similarly situated, I am often applied to, by amateurs and others interested in vine-culture, for advice and instructions on various points connected therewith; and much of the substance of this Treatise has been sent, at different times and in detached portions, in reply to such applications; and I may add that, in preparing it for publication in its present shape, I am but yielding to the urgent requests of not a few of those who profess to have reaped useful instruction from my private communications on the subject of which it treats. I have endeavoured as much as I could to avoid technicalities, and to be as brief as possible, consistent with making the subject in hand clear; and I have resisted the temptation of being led into lengthened physiological explanations of the facts I deal with. All I recommend I have in my own practice proved to be correct, and can do it with confidence. August 1862. WM. THOMSON. SECOND EDITION published September 1862. · FOURTH EDITION published January 1865. PREFACE TO EIGHTH EDITION. THE fact that ten thousand copies of this work have passed into circulation, indicates the importance in the present day of the subject of which it treats, and has induced me to go most carefully over the last edition, and add whatever further and extended experience has led me to consider of importance to those interested in grape cultivation. I have added a descriptive list of the most popular vines, the absence of which in former editions was by some readers considered a defect. PREFACE TO NINTH EDITION. WHILE I have carefully revised the present edition, I have not felt it necessary to make any alterations or additions to the directions it contains. TWEED VINEYARD, November 5, 1879. |