If the wounds made in the autumn or winter pruning have not fully healed over, vines are apt to bleed when vegetation commences. Various remedies have been pro posed. Hitt recommends, that after wiping the part dry., it should be basted with soot or with unslaked lime. Nicol is for searing the bleeding point, and then smearing it over with hot wax. Air Knight, from his own experience, re commends a composition of four scraped cheese and one part calcined oyster-shells, or lime, to be pressed strongly into the pores of the wood ; the sap almost hn mediately ceases to flow ; and if this composition be pro perly applied, even a large branch may he taken off at any season without detriment from bleeding.
On the open wall or trellis, grapes are very subject to the attacks of wasps. Some of the finest bunches may be saved by surrounding them with bags of crape or gauze. It may be mentioned, that bunches which have arrived at maturity only in the end of October, may be gathered by cutting off the shoots on which they grow : if these be suspended in a cool apartment, the fruit will keep for a month in a tolerably good state.
138. Early in the 18th century a kind of Hued walls were first used for the forwarding, or rather for the thorough ripening of grapes, at Belvoir Castle in Rut landshire, where Hitt, the author of the Treatise on Fruit trees, was an apprentice : mats were at the same time thrown over the vines at night, to save them from the chilling dews and hoar-frosts that occur in April and May. Since that time clued walls, with moveable glass frames, have been much used ; the same vines being brought into bearing every second or third year, arid, in the interme diate time, prevented from exhausting themselves, by the removal of the llower-stalks as they appear. Glazed houses for the culture of grapes have also been formed, under the name of Vineries,—to be afterwards described. Speechly vernal les, that good crops of grapes may be ob tained lrom vines trained against walls not more than six. feet high, by making use of melon-frame glasses, a tem porary narrow roof being made to receive the glasses. A slight degree of fire heat, he adds, would be of great advantage ; and in no situation, we may remark, would can-flues, such as are deribed in the first volume of Scottish Horticultural Alemoirs, be more suitable, these being easily removed, and as easily restored when wanted again.
In a very few places in England, vines are planted in the vineyard form, in ranges, about twelve feet asunder, the shoots being trained in a horizontal direction, to a series of stakes, three or four feet high, placed along the ranges.
139. We must not omit to mention, that one sort of vine may be grafted on another, in the ordin•lry way : the operation, however, must De performed with great care and exactness. In this way, if a wall have been planted with kinds injudiciously selected, they may, by grafting, be very speedily changed, preserving all the advantages of having strong well-rooted plants. In a small vinery or vine-frame, various kinds of grapes may thus be inserted on one stock. Speechly mentions a Syrian vine, which in this way produced sixteen different sorts of grapes. The principal advantage of grafting, however, is looked for in the modifying and improving of the various kinds ; the weak and tender being grafted on such as are robust and vigorous ; for example, the black frontignac, placed on the Syrian, is said to produce well•shaped large bunches, with berries nearly the size of those of the black Hamburg!). This Syrian vine is excellent for stocks ; and by some hor ticulturists, seedling stocks of it, grafted with other kinds, are accounted preferable to cuttings or layers of those kinds themselves. Vine-grafts are gathered at the time of the winter pruning, from bearing branches ; and they are kept sunk in light earth till the proper grafting sea son, which is about three weeks' before the stock break into bud. Those in a hot-house must of course be grafted several weeks before those out of doors. The finer sorts are generally grafted by approach.
140. The Fig•tree is the Ficus Carica of Linr.6, Poly gamia Dicecia ; belonging to the Ureic of Jussieu ; it is the Figuier of the French. It is considered as a native of Asia, but it has been cultivated for time immemorial in the south of Europe. It was first introduced into this country in the 16th century. Two very large trees, still remaining in the Archbishop of Canterbury's garden at Lambeth, are reported to have been the first planted in England, and to have been brought hither by Cardinal Pole. They are at any rate of great age. They are of the white Marseilles kind, and still continue to produce fruit.