GRAPES. 243 



and ten or twelve feet apart with slatted top, will suffice 

 for the second season's growth, and each season, as the vine 

 spreads, the canopy must be spread also to meet its increas- 

 ing requirements. 



It is a fact to be noted and heeded, especially by the 

 Northern settler* who thinks he * ' knows all about grapes," 

 that the Bullace family will not do well at all spread out 

 on the perpendicular arbors usual at the North, and indeed 

 every where, for most other varieties of grapes. They must 

 emphatically be kept spread out uniformly on this horizon- 

 tal canopy, and not permitted to overlap and crowd ; if 

 they are, the fruit production is lessened and deteriorated ; 

 also the trunk for six feet up must be relentlessly shorn of 

 all lateral branches. 



It has often been said that the Bullace grapes do not 

 need pruning ; and this is quite true in the sense in which 

 other grapes need it. This difference is owing to the fact 

 that in the Bullace or Vitis vulpina family all the eyes or 

 buds, that in other vines lie dormant, unless forced into 

 activity by pruning, start out of themselves, thus causing 

 a more even, uniform growth over the whole vine ; some- 

 times, when the vine is very vigorous, the branches over- 

 lap and crowd, and in these cases the Bullace vines need 

 pruning to the extent of cutting out the feebler stems. 

 We have often heard and known of persons "bleeding to 

 death," but it is not often that this happens to a denizen of 

 the vegetable world. 



Until very recently all nurserymen and growers held 

 that there was no remedy for preventing Bullace grape- 

 vines from literally bleeding to death if any considerable 

 limbs were cut or broken during those months when the 

 sap is flowing freely in the spring and summer. Such is 

 the tremendous force of the circulation of the sap, that 

 the wound thus made has no time to heal over like that of 



