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[Page 4]
better flavoured fruit, by being lower & having its Roof, which has 30 Degrees Elevation, better adapted for the admission of Light, directly from the Sun.
I will employ the Remainder of my paper in making a few observations on the apparently different actions of Heat & Light, or rather the want of Light in ill constructed Hothouse. A plant (I will here confine myself to the Vine} which could not be made to vegetate by the atumnal [autumnal] Sun, becomes excitable in the following Spring; & Heat alone is wanted to put it in motion; for it will vegetate in a dark Cellar. When a late ripening Fruit, such as the Alexandrian Muscat Grape, grows in a House whose Roof admits little Light, but which is kept warm, by the Flues & Tan-Bed the Excitability of the Vine appears to become exhausted before the Grapes are ripe, which of course wither on the Branches: &, long before they wither, cease to make any Progress whatever. I obtained a plant from a House of this Kind in which the Muscat of Alexandria never ripened; and I got it planted in a Vinery constructed on, what I conceive to be, the best plan; it's Roof had an Elevation of 34 degrees, & in this House, with even moderately good Care being taken of it, & with very little artificial Heat indeed, the Grapes ripen most perfectly. In the latter case it strikes me that the Vine retains its proper portion of Excitability, which in the former had been exhausted by the injurious Application of Heat, without Light.