ge THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR:1 Sra,—The author of
the interesting article on "English Vineyards," in the Spectator of September 22nd, is mistaken in supposing that "the practice of wine-making has ceased in this country for more than a century." In the late forties, so far as I can recollect, the Morning Chronicle correspondent for the Agricultural Cour:ties. in "Labour and the Poor," states he discovered near Bury St. Edmunds a stone-cutter, who, in a disused stone-quarry sheltered entirely from the north, had established a vineyard in which he made four or five pipes of wine every year, both white and red. Some twenty years after, I mentioned the fact to a gentleman connected with Bury St. Edmunds who had never heard of it, and who, as he afterwards told me, did not believe it. A few months later he told me, that having paid a visit to the neighbourhood, he had found out the man and paid a visit to him. The yield of the vineyard had then, I think, increased to seven pipes a year. Whether it still exists I do not know.—I am, Sir, &c., J. M. L.
P.5.—Might I add that a very nice jam is made in the North of France in bad vintage years, of half-ripe grapes and pears, that a still better one can be made of grapes and apples, and that such jams were made for several years from the grapes of a vine in Cadogan Place P
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