84 STATE IIORTICULTURAI. SOCIETY. 



on the farm. A second thinning will in a few years be necessary, taking the 

 alternate trees the otlier way. Your permanent trees will now stand fourteen feet 

 apart each way, a sufficient distance for a number of years, though not for large 

 trees, but the tliinnings will always pay a large per cent on the value of the 

 ground occupied. I shall not weary your patience by an array of figures to 

 convince you of the profitable value of an acre of black walnut timber at a 

 given age, but only remark that at fourteen feet each way you would have 

 something over two hundred trees, and that trees that have grown without cul- 

 ture within my recollection, and I am not yet fifty years of age, will now 

 readily bring five dollars each, and that such trees are sought after with dili- 

 gence and are being shipped from every railroad station in Central Indiana. 

 I will now close tiiis paper, already too long, with the prediction tiiat he who 

 plants a walnut grove, caring for it afterwards, will leave to posterity a richer 

 inheritance by far than the man who buys and sells on margins. 



PRUNING THE GRAPE. 



BY L. B. FIERCE, PORTAGE COUNTY, OHIO. 



The grape vine is preeminent among climbing shrubs for tlie abundance of 

 its watery sap, the size of its leaves, and the vigor of its growth. A native of 

 moist thickets, its early life is a struggle for existence, and many years some- 

 times elapse before its leaves bathe themselves in the free sunlight above the 

 tree tops. When once this period of its existence is reached the wild grape 

 vine runs riot as if intoxicated with success. The vigor which was so neces- 

 sary in its youthful combat Avith opposing forces, is not lessened by free con- 

 tact Avitli the dews of heaven, and it continues to push forward the thrifty 

 shoots in every direction, until those wonderful canopies of foliage are formed 

 which so often arrest the attention of the country traveler. Tliese luxuri- 

 antly beautiful bowers rarely hide mucli fruit. Tiiat which is the glory of 

 the cultivated vine, the clusters of purple and gold, is wanting. In its ram- 

 pant pushings and untrammeled wanderings it has dissipated its strength and 

 found but little time for the perfection of anything but leaves. "Nothing 

 but leaves" is too often the refrain which the autumnal winds sing as they 

 pass from one to another of these splendid monuments of nature's prodigal- 

 ity. To turn this prodigality into channels of us^cfulness is the work of the 

 vine-dresser. Having selected a vine whose fruit is an approach toward the 

 ideal, he cuts a single ripened bud, and by the application of heat and mois- 

 ture he furnishes it with roots, and tlius not only saves years of time, but pre- 

 serves the variety in its purity. The result of one season's growth of a 

 rooted grape bud is a slender vine, depending for its size upon the vigor of 

 the variety and the length and favorableness of the season. While a weak 

 vine in a poor season will not mature more than five or six buds, a strong one 

 under favorable circumstances may ripen a hundred. After a young vine has 



