ON THE PRUNING OF VINES. 83 



can occupy, because the ascent of the sap is thereby 

 facilitated ; in consequence of which all the lowermost 

 buds break very weakly, and some not at all, while the 

 sap flies with such force to the extremities, that scarcely 

 any good bearing-shoots can be made to grow from the 

 vicinity of the stem. This necessarily causes the 

 retention of old naked wood at the autumnal pruning, 

 and this annually increasing in distance from the stem, 

 no species of pruning will prevent it occupying in a 

 short time a disproportionate extent of the surface of 

 the wall, and causing all the fruit to be borne at the 

 extremities of the branches. Other objections might 

 be urged, but the foregoing sufficiently show, that, 

 without very disadvantageous results, vines cannot be 

 pruned to be trained in the fruit-tree method. 



Spur Pruning. This is the usual method adopted 

 throughout the country in the pruning of vines, but 

 although almost universally practised, it is calculated 

 in a high degree to create a large scaffolding or su- 

 perstructure of old naked wood. A spur may be 

 defined to be a shoot, shortened so as to contain not 

 more than four buds. If a shoot contain five buds, it 

 cannot with propriety be called a spur. Spur pruning, 

 therefore, is the annual shortening of the fruit-bearing 

 shoots of a vine, so that each shall contain not more 

 than four buds. This being premised, it will be neces- 

 sary to point out in as distinct a manner as possible the 

 disadvantages attending this method of pruning a 

 vine. 



First, every shoot that is sufficiently large to bear 

 fruit, emitted by an established vine, if it be trainad 

 at full length throughout the summer, in the manner 

 hereafter mentioned in the chapter on training, will 

 produce, at least, twenty good well-ripened fruit-buds, 

 and each of these, in the following year, will produce 

 on an average two bunches of grapes, so that a shoot 



