GIVE AMPLE SPACE. 139 



affected it badly, and before these defects manifested themselves ; 

 so that it has come to be a saying among grape-growers at the 

 West, in regard to any new grapes, that it remains to be seen 

 whether these kinds that are now enjoying immunity from 

 disease, will continue to have that exemption. 



When you consider that the grape lives a thousand years, that 

 it grows to a large size when let alone, that those old vines are 

 always healthy, I think you will see immediately how much 

 better it will be to give your grape extension,, and to let it have 

 that way which nature indicates for it so plainly by its rampant 

 growth and habits, than to confine it within too narrow bounds, 

 at the risk of gorging it with unripe sap and inducing disease. 

 There is a vine in Richmond which was measured by two friends 

 of mine, officers of the Thirty-Second Massachusetts Regiment, 

 who came through that city after the surrender of Lee, and 

 found to be forty-eight inches in circumference at the base, and 

 sixteen inches in diameter. There is one vine in New Jersey 

 with a diameter of two feet. Downing mentions one on an 

 island in the Ohio River which had a diameter of two feet, and 

 the branches of which covered more than an acre. These 

 largest vines were estimated by Downing to be two thousand 

 years old, and I do not know why they may not be. • There is a 

 bearing vine in New Jersey which gave, two years ago, seventy- 

 eight bushels of fruit which went to market. 



These facts which I instance, all go to prove that the grape 

 ought to have a large extension ; and if you plant your vine- 

 yard, setting your vines eight feet apart, or eight feet by ten, 

 and take crops from it for several years — for ten years, we will 

 say — until the vines get too large for the space, cut out every 

 alternate vine, (which have paid for themselves over and over,) 

 instead of cutting back too closely in pruning. I have no doubt 

 myself that the sap is injured by this engorgement. If you 

 girdle a vine, a very common practice, you increase the size of 

 the wood, and also the fruit beyond the part you have girdled, 

 because you have intercepted the return of the sap ; but that 

 wood is more imperfect, and that fruit, I think, is never so good 

 as that made from the thoroughly ripened sap of another vine, 

 where all the processes have gone on naturally, and the return 

 of the sap has not been impeded. I suppose engorgement has 

 some such effect as this, that the crude, unripe sap distends the 



