Mr. Editor: As your correspondent in the January No. of the Horticulturist has solicited my mode of preventing and destroying mildew, the great bar to successful growing and ripening of foreign grapes in the open air in this country, and as I have succeeded in producing them of very great excellence, even surpassing in grand appearance, large berries, and magnificent clusters, those grown under glass in my own neighborhood, and as your Rhode Island Horticultural Society and committee (who had some of my clusters on exhibition the past season) looked upon them "almost as a miracle," "and doubted of their having been grown in open air;" and again, from the fact that my grapes, both foreign and native, carried off the first and second prizes wherever they were shown - all this induces me to imagine there may be some virtue in my mode of treatment, and is the excuse I offer for the occupation of space in your highly esteemed and increasingly valuable journal.

First a good rich border is indispensable. As soon as the frost has destroyed the foliage, cat all the present year's wood back to the third and fourth eye; lay the cuttings or some other brush directly under the pruned vine, and over this lay straw; bend down the foreign vine on this, and cover with straw again, holding all down till an assistant lays on an inverted sod; then cut more sods, and lay them like shingles on a roof, and the work is done, and your vines will not suffer from the heavy rains of autumn and spring, and their eyes will not be put out by hard substances, and the result will be, every eye will reward you with rich clusters.

Then the next enemy to be looked after is mildew; and for this monster I have constructed a formidable weapon after this fashion:

Fig. 1.

Fig. 2.

Apparatus Fig. 1 is a tin pipe, twelve inches long, three inches in diameter, with a button in one end, and a lid C, with a wide band, shutting well on the other, where the sulphur and ball are put in. The ball B is made of twine, and should be a little smaller than the pipe, and well stitched, to prevent its becoming loose. D D D are three thimbles, well soldered on, to receive the bamboo handle E, which can be from two to twelve feet, to meet the wants of the proprietor, but should not be less than two feet, in order to keep the sulphur from the operator's clothes. The holes for the escape of the sulphur, must be small; a common darning-needle will pierce them quite large enough, and they should be about half an inch apart, all over the apparatus. The ball in the apparatus acts as pulverizer of sulphur, accumulator of wind, and expeller of both.