Norman's Market-Garden, at the eastern extremity of Brighton, in Park Street, is remarkable for its vineries, which form a range 400 ft. long, 15 ft. wide, and 12 ft. high at back. There is no front glass, but a parapet of 2 ft. with openings with wooden shutters for admitting air, and there are corresponding openings and shutters at the top of the back wall. Both are opened by jointed wooden levers, in a very simple manner. These houses were put up about twenty years ago; and they are heated by flues, which Mr. Norman, after nineteen years' experience, considers cheaper than the hot-water system. The vines are spurred in, and one bunch only left on each lateral branch. The bunches are not large, but they are numerous, and equally distributed over the whole vine; and the laterals being twice as numerous as in the house of Messrs. Evans just mentioned, the total weight of grapes produced from a square foot of glass is probably not materially different. Mr. Norman begins to force his earliest house on Feb. 1st, and his crop generally ripens in sixteen weeks. He had just (May 25th) begun to cut in his earliest houses. The vines are so far apart that abundance of light is admitted between each main stem, and to this circumstance, the dryness of the fire heat, and also the dryness of the soil and subsoil, Mr. Norman attributes the high flavour of the grapes, which, he says, are the highest in flavour which are brought to Covent Garden Market. The borders are broad, occasionally very slightly cropped, or sometimes mulched, and in very dry weather, while the fruit is growing, watered along the outer extremity, where most of the fibrous roots are supposed to be. The kinds grown here, and also in the Rose Hill Nursery, are almost entirely the Hamburgh, with a few of the white Nice for the size of the bunch, and one or two muscats for flavour; but, as the muscats now seldom bring a higher price than the Hamburghs, they are not much grown.
