PRUNING AND TRAINING. 125 



building up and completing the structure. No matter how 

 thoroughly this foundation has been laid, or how congenial 

 arc all the surroundings, unless we practice a system of 

 pruning and training that harmonizes with the known laws 

 that govern the growth of the vine, all the care that has 

 been or may be bestowed upon it will not bring bountiful 

 crops, or insure us against a partial if not a total failure. 

 The success of grape culture in this country depends almost 

 entirely upon a general diffusion of practical information 

 relative to pruning and training. 



There is certainly much depending upon the adaptation 

 of varieties to different localities as well as the mode of 

 culture adopted, but these points seem to be better under- 

 stood than pruning and training, as information relative 

 thereto is easily conveyed through the ordinary mediums 

 for reaching the public. The interest manifested at the 

 present time in grape culture owes its origin in a great 

 measure to the fact that with the introduction of new na- 

 tive varieties of superior merit, the attempt to cultivate 

 foreign varieties in the open air has been discontinued, 

 thereby removing one great cause of failure. Many per- 

 sons who experienced failure from this cause pronounce 

 all attempts at grape culture in this country to be useless. 

 Another class of cultivators, having escaped the foreign 

 grape fever, have caught the native one, and judging from 

 observation only, condemn not only the foreign varieties, 

 but all the modes and systems ever adopted for their culti- 

 vation ; some of these cultivators are now groping their 

 way in the dark, following no system, because they have 

 been unable to find one in which there is nothing foreign. 

 I have digressed from the more practical part of my sub- 

 ject to show how readily some will let their prejudices lead 

 them from one fatal extreme to another. 



While I rejoice that the time has come when no intelli- 

 gent man in the Northern States would think of planting 

 a vineyard with foreign varieties, still I am not ready to 



