REPORT OF MR. FRANCIS II. APPLETON.
521
1 have made use of a contrivance first applied by me on the estate of Meschau, which I had leased in the year 1858. Here it was attended with the best results. The hops are dried on flakes in the magazines, just as malt in the kilns. Narrow boards are placed perpendicularly between the floor and ceiling, holes two and a half to three inches in diameter are cut in them at intervals of about one foot, and hop-poles passed through from board to board horizontally. The flakes are then covered with hops to the depth of one to two inches and laid upon these poles. They consist of a wooden frame or coarse sackcloth.
The hops thus exposed are stirred up and turned by tapping slightly upon the lower side of the net with a light rod.
This simple and convenient method of hop-drying has proved invariably successful, and has been widely imitated.
In order to try how grapes would grow on my estate, and what quality of wine they would produce, I set out a few vines in 1865 in the Elbe suburb of Kolin, and also in my kitchen garden at the Castle of Horskyfeld. The grapes yielded were pressed, and gave a wine of good quality.
Dr. Schmidt, imperial and royal counsellor for the section, now deceased, and celebrated as the reformer of grape- culture in Bohemia, had produced such excellent results by his methods of treating the grape-vine and wine at TJnter- berJcowitz, that I was led to introduce grape-culture on my estate at Kolin, on a much larger scale and conformably to his principles.
To carry out my project I selected the wooded territory situated in the parish of Lzowitz, near Elbe-Teinitz, lying between the lines eleven and four, and having a southerly and south-westerly slope. It is thoroughly sheltered from the cold east winds and constant west winds prevalent. The formation of the mountain is in layers, with an inclination of forty-five degrees. The upper portion of the tract was covered with sand to the depth of nineteen feet, and abounds in springs. Not far from the foot of the slope flows the Elbe.
The whole territory was woody; above was pine; below, on the portions constantly covered by inundations, was a growth of brush springing from the roots of fallen trees of 66