When our attention is attracted to the pages of the Horticulturist, it is either from a love of knowing how the beautiful things in Nature burst spontaneously into existence, or fostered forward by the scientific hand of man, or the construction and execution of his mechanical powers. In either case it is pleasing and interesting. But it very often occurs that we turn to those pages for something that materially affects our own individual interests. Perhaps the cultivation of some very delicate and choice fruit; the formation of a vine border on or over a peculiar subsoil; the mode of pruning or training" requisite to insure fruit from certain species of trees, or the best design for some horticultural building. Whatever the subject may be that directly affects our personal interest, we anxiously and gladly receive it, depending solely upon the efficiency, practical working, utility, adaptability for an intended purpose, as set forth by the author, whoever he may be, taking it for granted that the subject he introduces to the public is his own individual experience, the result of practice worked out of time.

This is what we mean by "Experience," and what all who talk about experience should mean.

For instance, take a man who has been working all his life in a culinary garden, (and we will allow him to have a good deal of natural ingenuity;) ask him to design for you a mansion, adequate to the requirements of your large family and tell him the house must combine elegance in the architectural design, convenience, ample room, and for a certain specified sum of money it must be built. We do not deny the impossibility of his giving you a very pretty plan; but suppose we put this pretty plan in the hands of one of our every day designing architects, would he not at once say within himself, This has been got up by a novice? This man can design, but he has bad no experience in this matter; has never been accustomed to live in a house of this description, or he certainly never would have made so many gross mis-takes.

In the April number of the Horticulturist, page 170, we have a perfect fac simile of the above. Here we have a "Design for a range of Grape-Houses," by Mr. John B. Eaton, Buffalo. With all due respect to that gentleman, we feel it our bounden duty to point out to the readers of the Horticulturist what we consider to be, in our humble opinion, grave mistakes.

The plan is shown in the Horticulturist, combining a range of four houses twenty feet wide, with the total length of the four measuring one hundred and eighty feet. Mr. Eaton's motive in designing this range with four wings combined, we have no particular objection to; still to commercial growers, who, from necessity, ought to obtain the very perfection of fruit, I should by no means recommend it; for we invariably find in all houses erected on the curvilinear principle, that the vines and fruit are better on one side of the house than on the other; and this is owing to the direct action of light or the sun's rays. You will also find that where curvilinear houses run east and west, the vines will start into growth on the south side long before those on the north, for the simple reason that the border on the north is often frozen up when the south border is warm and vegetating. Again, the foliage of the vines on the south side of the house so much shades those on the opposite side, that it is scarcely ever the wood of the latter gets properly ripened; indeed, 1 may safely say, never. The cardinal error, however, is in the arrangement of the crops, or rather forcing the crops.

Here we have the house marked A with the greatest number of feet of pipe in, and designed as the first forcing-house, placed completely north, where it is subject to all the cold, perishing winds, without any protection whatever, and even the boiler and entrance to it with the same objections. I should have thought that a man having any experience on this subject - that had ever forced grapes, even one year, in such a design as this - would have had the house marked B the first forcing-house, and A the retarding-house. Certainly you could retard your vines better in a house where the glass faces east and west, than in that of D, where it faces the south. Another point is gained if B is made the first early, which is a considerable item in forcing; that is, the screen or protection the other three houses provide. It will make a considerable difference in a heap of coals whether the forcing-house stands at the north or the south in this design. It strikes me very forcibly, that in trying to force the house marked Af the winds from the north would blow out all the heat you could make from that flow and return pipe, just a little faster than you could make it under the boiler.

Glass all round the house, Mr. Eaton, makes a very poor forcing-house. In our simple opinion, there is nothing that will beat the old lean-to; and I if you think it is requisite, or they can not be built only in short lengths, and each to have a separate fire, you will find that at least around NewYork it is not so; for we have houses three hundred feet long, with six rows of pipe, which are heated with one boiler. It is a very poor boiler (so considered now in New York) that will not thoroughly heat the water in a thousand feet of pipe. One that will heat four or live hundred feet can be picked up almost any where, and bought as old iron. I honestly believe there are no better boilers in the world than are manufactured in New York. And yet, our country cousins in Philadelphia could scarcely muster a dozen common boilers in their whole city, if we were to go and hunt them up to-day. I suppose the reason is, they don't see the Horticulturist.

Mr. Eaton, speaking in reference to the propriety of placing span-roofed houses at C and D in his plan, says," It may be thought by some greatly out of rule, but I am satisfied that their many advantages more than counterbalance the partial deprivation of sun which the vines on the northerly sides would experience, and which would be somewhat greater than in a lean-to house of less width." We would much like to know what these many advantages are to the commercial man, for whom this design is intended.

Mr. Eaton goes on to say, "If it be desirable that the time of ripening should be nearly equalized through the whole house, it is not difficult to select earlier sorts for the northerly sides, which will naturally be retarded until their maturity nearly corresponds with those in front; but I do not consider it a disadvantage to have the season of each sort prolonged by the different exposures, and think it quite feasible, by a judicious selection of varieties, to cause the north and south sides of those two houses to furnish as regular a succession of each sort, as if they were grown in distinct apartments."This is strange advice to give a man who is going to grow grapes for market; and if I were to act upon such advice, after waiting for three or four years for my crop of grapes, the test of this experiment would unquestionably be my ruin. Now, to settle the whole question on this point at once, there are only two varieties of grapes that are worth the commercial man's attention! I say it emphatically, there are only two kinds of grapes that will pay him to take to market, and these must be in number one condition.

The two varieties I have reference to are Hamburghs and Muscats. All the early varieties Mr. Eaton has reference to, such as all the Chasselas and Frontignan class, with the whole host of other names, for a commercial man to plant, would be almost as bad as taking money out of his pocket and throwing it into Lake Erie, at Buffalo. At a time this spring when Hamburghs were selling in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia for a dollar and fifty cents per pound wholesale, the Chasselas varieties sold for about sixty cents! The man who intends to get his living by growing and selling grapes, must realize a given number of pounds' weight from every vine, and each pound must bring him a certain price in order to pay expenses and realize an interest on his capital invested. One half the stories told about grape-growing, and grape paying, are nothing more than fairy tales, fit only to be told by those who have no respect for truth.

For a private gentleman's establishment, who may be pleased with a toy, and may require a number of varieties, in order to tell his friends how many sorts he grows, and who is better able to pay for experimenting, whims, and hobbies than the man who is necessitated to make a living of it, we have no particular objection to this "cross-stick" plan of John B. Eaton, Esq.

[Fox Meadow is a veteran grape-grower, and whatever he Bays on this subject will have its weight. His objections to Mr. Eaton's plan of forcing (at least so far as the latter may be intended for commercial men) would seem to be well taken, Mr. Eaton, however, may have something to say in defence of his plan. Where grapes are to be grown for pro6t, economy must be studied at all points; and this should be borne in mind in discussing the subject. It is now attracting so much attention, that a good deal more may be said profitably. - Ed].