Page:A Treatise on the Culture of the Vine and, and the Art of Making Wine.pdf/91

 to it. It is common, for instance, in Madeira, to train the vines over a horizontal trellis, and to shade the branches beneath, by the foliage which the trellis supports. That this treatment might prove effectual, may with great probability be inferred, from the complete preservation of those bunches of the blighting varieties, which are enclosed, and allowed to swell and ripen, in paper bags. It is certain that in the present state of our knowledge on the subject, no experiment is unimportant, from which there is the most distant prospect of deriving useful results. But all the facts we are acquainted with, seem to me to point out in the strongest manner, the importance of obtaining new varieties from seed, and I shall, therefore, quote at some length from Mr. Knight, a description of the methods he found most successful in obtaining new varieties of apples from seed, in the hope, that many may be led to apply the same principles to the vine, from the conviction, that at no distant day, the wine of New South Wales may be equal in importance, to the cider of England, with all the improvement it is susceptible of from the labours of this ingenious philosopher.

"When I first began to suspect," (says Mr. Knight p. 30) "that my endeavours to propagate