302 GRAPtf. 



ripen in great perfection, without encumbering the borders; 

 or the plants may be trained low, like currant bushes, in 

 which case, three or more shoots, eighteen inches or two feet 

 in length, may diverge from the stem near the ground, to 

 supply young wood annually for bearing. The Summer 

 pruning consists in removing shoots which have no fruit, or 

 are not required for the succeeding season ; in topping fruit- 

 bearing shoots, and also those for succeeding years, when 

 inconveniently long and straggling. For as by this mode, 

 the shoots destined to bear, afe all cut in to three or four 

 eyes at the Winter pruning, no inconvenience arises from 

 their throwing out laterals near the extremities, which 

 stopping will generally cause them to do. 



In training Vines as standards, the single stem at the 

 bottom is not allowed to exceed six or eight inches in height, 

 and from this two or three shoots are trained, or tied to a 

 single stake of three or four feet in length. These shoots 

 bear each two or three bunches, within a foot or eighteen 

 inches of the ground, and they are annually succeeded by 

 others which spring from their base, that is, from the crown 

 or top of the dwarf main stem. This is the mode practised 

 in the North of France and in Germany; in the South of 

 France and Italy, the base or main stem is often higher, and 

 furnished with side shoots, in order to afford a great supply 

 of bearing wood, which is tied to one or more poles of 

 greater height. The Summer pruning in this case, is 

 nearly the same as in the last. In the Winter pruning, the 

 wood that has borne is cut out, and the new wood shorten ed y 

 in cold situations, to three or four eyes, and in warmer 

 places to six or eight eyes. 



Abercrombie's methods of pruning established Vines, 

 admit of much diversity, as the plants' are in different situa- 

 tions. Without reckoning the cutting down of young or 

 weak plants alternately to the lowermost Summer shoots^ 

 which is but a temporary course, three different systems of 

 pruning have their advocates. In the first method, one 

 perpendicular leader is trained from the stem, at the side of 

 which, to the right and left, the ramifications spring. When 

 the plant is established, the immediate bearers, or shoots of 



