I40 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



of the Experiment Station, a delightful man and very well 

 informed. I spoke a little while ago of the place of the Ameri- 

 can vine in culture in Italy. American vines are used for 

 stocks, and they have saved the wine and grape industry of that 

 country. They are absolutely essential to grape culture. 



Speaking of vines, we now come to the great vine-growing 

 region of the German Rhine region and this is a characteristic 

 picture that one might secure from one of the steamers going 

 down the Rhine towards Cologne. Here we have the terraced 

 banks. If it were not for terraces, vine growing would be 

 impossible, but having them terraced it makes it feasible. The 

 wines made from grapes grown in this section have a national 

 reputation. 



I was surprised at the extent to which spraying was employed 

 in the vineyard region and the way in which it was viewed by 

 those more or less illiterate peasants. They look upon it in 

 vine growing as an absolute necessity. They spray their vines 

 just as regularly and consistently as they cultivate the ground 

 or as they prune the vines. 



THE VINE IN GERMANY. 



Here we have one of these Rhine River peasants spraying 

 his vines. It is not pleasant work under any circumstances, 

 but it is very unpleasant work when you have to "tote" a 

 knapsack pump on your back. The goodwife generally works 

 alongside the goodman in the vineyard. She does the pruning. 



We are now in Germany where the vines are grown on posts, 

 a post to each vine. They need a great deal of pruning and 

 training so that the manual labor side of the question is an 

 exceedingly important one. 



In Switzerland the terrace system and the hillside method of 

 growing vines are very much in vogue. These baskets, fas- 

 tened to the backs of the workmen, are the general means not 

 only of transporting the grapes out of the vineyard, because 

 inaccessible to horses and to vehicles, but also the method of 

 transporting the fertilizer into the vineyard, and in this particu- 

 lar case the sidehill is so steep that the soil washes down to the 

 lower part of each individual terrace. It is then carried by the 

 workman in this basket on his own back and placed at the top 

 again, where nature will gradually take it down. 



