130 FRUIT CULTURE UNDER GLASS. 



stamping out this destroyer is to burn the vines, 

 remove right away all the soil, well salt the site of 

 the border, and wash and paint everything connected 

 with the vinery before fresh soil is put into it. This 

 is the process that I have adopted ; and I think, in 

 the interests of grape -growing, all who have this pest 

 in their vineries should, for their own sake and that 

 of others, pursue the more certain course. 



DISEASES TO WHICH VINES ARE SUBJECT. 



Shanking. This disease has derived its name from 

 its being an affection of the " shanks " or stalks of the 

 berries. Just as the berries begin to colour and 

 ripen, their stalks shrivel up, and become hard and 

 wiry in fact, die. The ripening process is thus 

 arrested, the berries ferment, become exceedingly sour, 

 and eventually drop off the shrivelled stalks, unless 

 they are cut off the bunch. Generally speaking, it is 

 most inveterate in straggling bunches, the berries of 

 which have long slender stalks, and which betoken a 

 debilitated state of the vine. Grape-growers have dif- 

 fered widely as to the cause of shanking. Some have 

 attributed its presence to the vines being in cold, wet 

 borders ; .others, to the borders being too dry ; others, 

 again, have blamed heavy cropping, &c. &c. Doubtless 

 all these, or any other conditions that have a tendency 

 to impair the constitution of the vine, may have some- 

 thing to do with the malady. But my own experience 

 leads me to believe that a cold, adhesive, wet border- 

 is the most general producer of it ; and I agree with 

 that theory of the disease which my brother was the 

 first to propound in his 'Practical Treatise on the 

 Vine/ and from which I quote the following passage : 



