Apricots are trained somewhat horizontally, and they bear not only on the shoots of the last year, but on close spurs formed by the two years' old wood. Apricot trees are very apt to have large limbs die off without any apparent cause; but this may be prevented by covering all the principal limbs in October with hay-bands, and letting them remain on till all danger is over from frost. Apricot trees should be five and twenty feet apart on the wall, as they spread rapidly, and do not bear cutting in. The fruit should be thinned in May, or the beginning of June.

Plum trees will bear a little manure being laid on the surface in autumn, and slightly forked in in spring. They are trained horizontally, and they bear on what are called spurs; that is, short rugged-looking little branches, jutting out from shoots two or three years old, and which will continue fruitful for several years. Plum trees, in consequence, require very little pruning; and, in fact, as they are apt to gum when they are wounded, they should be very seldom touched with a knife.

Cherry trees resemble plum trees in their culture, and, when grown against a wall, most of the kinds are trained horizontally, and their branches kept six or eight inches apart. The morello cherry is, however, an exception to this rule, as it requires pruning and training, like the peach.

Fig trees should never be pruned, except to remove shoots that cannot be trained, as the fruit is produced on the young wood at the extremity of the branches. Fig trees should be planted thirty feet apart, and trained horizontally, their long branches being bent backwards and forwards, in order to make them throw out side shoots for bearing fruit, which they will generally do where the bend is made. Fig trees require to be well supplied with water, though they will not grow if any stagnant water be suffered to remain about

the roots.

The pomegranate resembles the fig tree in producing its flowers only on the points of its shoots, and on short twigs projecting from its trained branches. Pomegranates require a rich soil; and when it is wished to throw them into fruit, the blossoms should be shaded during the time of expansion, as otherwise the pollen will dry up without fertilising the stigma.

Grapes are frequently grown against a wall in the open air; and in some cases, as, for example, by Mr. Clement Hoare, near Southampton, with very great success. Grapes have been also produced of excellent quality against a flued wall; that is, a hollow wall heated by means of flues in it, as at Erskine, near Greenock; but as, in both cases, extraordinary care is required, I would advise you only to have a common sweet-water vine

or two in your garden on the open wall, for the purpose of using its leaves in garnishing, and to grow vines in a vinery to produce the grapes you require for the table.

A vinery is a common hothouse or bark stove, heated with hot-water pipes or flues, and with a pit in the centre, which is generally filled with tan for pines. This appears a very simple and economical arrangement, but it has one great disadvantage; namely, that the pines require heat at a season when the vines should be in perfect repose, unless very early crops of grapes are desired. In other cases the centre of the vinery is planted with peach and nectarine trees for early forcing, the branches of the trees being trained over a curved trellis, and other peach and nectarine trees or vines, planted in the house, being trained against a trellis at the back. The vines for the main crop are, however, planted on the outside of the house, in a border prepared like that for the fruit trees, but richer; and their stems are brought into the vinery, through holes left for that purpose in the front wall. Several compositions have been recommended for making a compost for a vine border; but that most approved is, two parts of turfy loam mixed with one part of very rotten dung or decayed leaves, one part of lime rubbish, and one part of road drift. On the Continent they frequently bury the parts

cut off the vine in pruning, in the border, and this is said to make excellent manure.

Vines are generally not planted in the border till about a year old, and they are best struck from cuttings of one bud or eye each, with about half an inch of stem left above and below the eye; the cutting is then planted in a small pot (60), and covered with soil half an inch thick, after which the pot is plunged to the rim in a common hotbed, or into the tan-pit in the centre of the vinery, covering it in the latter case with a handglass; the object being to keep the young plant growing in a moist heat of 60°. The young plants should be afterwards shifted into larger and larger pots, as they require it; and their stems, which will grow rapidly, should be trained either to a single stick or to a framework of sticks tied together, according as the plant is wanted to be spreading or trained to a single stem. If the eye has been a large and healthy one, and the wood of the stem from which it was taken firm and well ripened, the cuttings will grow rapidly. Care must be taken to give the young plant a gentle sprinkling of water every four or five days, and to let it have plenty of air, and not too much heat from the bed. The water should be given at night, and the glasses of the frame should be shut close immediately, as the steam thus generated is found very beneficial to

the young plant. As when the plant is shifted the first time the stem, or cane as it is called, is generally six or eight inches long, great care must be taken not to injure either it or the spongioles of the roots in shifting; and, as the stem or cane is of course always longer every time the plants are shifted, additional care is required every time of performing the operation. While the plant is in the hotbed, the wires or tendrils, and also the weak lateral shoots, must be pinched off as fast as they are produced.

If the cutting was made in the first week of March, and has been properly treated, it will have a strong stem of ten or twelve feet long, and perhaps more, by the middle of June or the beginning of July. Many gardeners advise planting the vines out at this season, as they say they grow more vigorously, and form better wood, with only their stems in the hothouse, than when they are confined to the moist close heat of the bed. Other gardeners, however, keep their young vines in the pots till the following February, when the canes are generally five feet long, and as thick as the little finger.

When the plants are put into the ground there should be one vine to each hole; and, as every hole is made opposite a rafter, there is thus one vine allotted to every sash or light. A shallow pit is made in the ground for each vine, and,