454 PROPAGATING, PRUNING, AND TRAINING THE VINE. 



ticable to prevent the snow from melting or the spring rains from falling 

 and cooling the soil, the only mode of counteracting the evil is so to arrange 

 that the water shall be carried rapidly off by the subsoil. Every shower 

 which succeeds will be at a somewhat higher temperature, at least till mid- 

 summer, and as it nitrates through the soil will leave in it a portion of its 

 heat, till showers falling at 70, or upwards, will leave the soil at that 

 temperature. 



957. Form of house. It is almost unnecessary to observe that the vine 

 ma}- be cultivated in any form of structure with a glass roof, from a cucum- 

 ber-frame to a house ; the most common form and dimensions of which 

 in use in British gardens are as follow : Length, thirty feet ; width, 

 fourteen feet ; height at back, nine feet, at front, two feet. The end and 

 front walls to be on arches, and the whole to be heated by one fire. The 

 furnace to have a door one foot square, and the sides of the fuel-chamber 

 to be of Welsh lumps ; and the rise from the bars of the furnace to the 

 bottom of the flue to be eighteen inches. The flue to run two feet from 

 the front- wall, and to return within two and a half inches of the back- wall, 

 with a chimney in the back- wall over the furnace. The flue to be eighteen 

 inches deep, with the covers and bottoms of one-foot tiles. Doors at each 

 end of the house, or at the fire- end, if but one door. Rafters fixed ; the 

 sashes moveable in two lengths, lapping in the middle ; the top lights to be 

 one inch wider than the lower ones, and the lower ones to run up and down 

 in a groove formed in the rafter under the top light, so that the top and 

 bottom lights may run free of each other. A trellis of wire to be fixed to 

 the rafters fifteen inches from the glass, and the vines to be planted between 

 the front-wall and the flue. If hot water is employed instead of smoke 

 flues, then the pipes may be placed in exactly the same situation as the 

 flues ; they may be four inches in diameter, and there may be two upper pipes 

 and two lower ones ; one of the upper pipes and one of the lower ones may 

 form a distinct circulation from the other two, so that when only a small 

 degree of fire heat is required, the circulation may be stopped in half 

 the extent of piping. For early forcing, the house, if still to be managed 

 with one fire, may be somewhat narrower and the roof steeper. In houses 

 of this kind the vines are wintered, not by withdrawing them, but by the 

 removal of the sashes. (G. M., xvii. 310.) 



SUBSECT. II. Propagating, Pruning, and Training the Vine. 



958. The vine is commonly propagated by eyes or cuttings (606) and some- 

 times by layers, and a year may generally be gained by procuring rooted 

 plants from the nurseries. To make sure of having the sorts true to their 

 names, however, many gardeners raise their own plants. On the Continent 

 the vine is generally propagated by cuttings of from a foot to two feet in 

 length, taken off with a piece of the preceding year's wood attached ; and 

 this used also to be the custom in this country, till about the time of 

 Speachley. 



959. In pruning the vine never cut close to the eye, because the wood 

 being spongy, dies back more or less, and consequently injures the bud ; but 

 cut in the middle of the internode, which leaves a sufficient space for the 

 wood to die back before it reaches the bud. The cut ought to slope away 

 from the eye, in order that in case of bleeding the eye may not be injured. 

 The summer pruning of the vine consists almost entirely in stopping the 



