140 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



wood, and it is not so solid, ripe and sound as it otherwise would 

 be, and becomes liable to that disease called canker among nur- 

 sery-men. Blight, which is sometimes caused in the spring, has 

 an aspect something like that. The young shoot, being pushed 

 forward prematurely by the heats of spring, is blighted by the 

 cold, easterly storms that sometimes follow. That has happened 

 for two years past. In warm, sheltered locations the vine has 

 put forth its shoots two weeks earlier than usual, and the cold 

 easterly storms, with the thermometer very nearly at the freez- 

 ing point, have blighted those shoots, and they have been discol- 

 ored and taken on this very form which gardeners call canker. 

 Such wood should never be used for propagation, because the 

 disease is continued. The new growing wood will have the 

 same predisposition to disease, and it will never be so good a 

 vine, if, indeed, it does not go on from bad to worse. 



Most of you have vines of your own which you can multiply, 

 and it is better for a man to make his own vines than to buy 

 them, if he can wait for them, because he can then select the 

 proper wood to make vines from, and, when they are made, 

 reject those which are weak. The wood should be sound, short- 

 jointed and well-ripened. Some prefer the long-jointed wood, 

 of a rampant and coarse-growing character. Well-, gentlemen, 

 if you were to go into my vineyard, where I do not use manure, 

 you would find, out of twenty-five inches of wood, three, four 

 or five inches, rarely more, of perfectly solid, well-ripened wood, 

 and well-developed buds for bearing the next year. On the 

 contrary, if you find a vine over-fed, ill-fed, heavily-fed, long- 

 jointed, it will be found to have smaller buds, very many of 

 them leaf buds, and very poorly developed fruit buds, which 

 will give you meagre bunches next year. Let me state an 

 instance to illustrate that. I knew a handsome orchard in Nor- 

 folk County belonging to a carpenter. He kept it in the finest 

 condition ; he was always feeding it and pruning it, and he had 

 very handsome trees, but no fruit. After the old gentleman 

 died, his son left the place, and the orchard was neglected. At 

 the end of two years he came home to find it heavily loaded 

 with fruit. 



You must have a proper balance, and then you have fruit and 

 wood in proper quantities. Indeed, the law of pruning would 

 lie in that. If you have excessive root-power there will be too 



