ON THE TRAINING OF VINES. 93 



which is of primary importance ; for, if, by injudicious 

 pruning or training, or both combined, the sap have an 

 opportunity of exerting its full force at a distance from 

 the arms, it is sure to embrace it, and the consequence 

 is, that blank wood begins immediately to be formed in 

 all directions near the stem, and when that is the case, 

 no method of pruning will ever again procure a supply of 

 bearing- wood at home, short of that of cutting the vine 

 down to a perfect stump. In training the shoots 1, 2, 

 3, 4, the spaces between them must be regulated by the 

 number of shoots intended to be trained up from the 

 spurs D. Each of these latter will require Jive inches 

 of clear space on each side of it, and the former nine, 

 for the fruiting-shoots, as represented by the dotted lines 

 e,y, g, h, at the shoot 1. These shoots, producing on 

 an average two bunches each, are to be topped one joint 

 beyond the last bunch, as directed in the Calendarial 

 Register, June 10th. (See page 115.) 



For the foregoing reasons, therefore, the method of 

 serpentine training may be considered preferable to 

 every other, being calculated in a greater degree to check 

 the too rapid ascent of the sap, and to make it flow 

 more equally into the fruiting-shoots, and those intend- 

 ed for future bearers. On walls that are much less than 

 five feet high, a portion of the shoots must be trained 

 horizontally. Let fig. 4 (page 94) represent a wall 

 four feet high, and let the face of it be divided into equal 

 parallel portions of twelve inches in height, by the hori- 

 zontal lines 1, 2, 3, 4 ; then on each side of the stem, 

 from the arms A, A, may be trained two fruiting-shoots 

 at 2, and 4, and the same number of current year's shoots 

 at the dotted lines above 1, and 3. And in like manner, 

 half that number of shoots may be easily trained on a wall 

 two feet high. The pruning, in these cases, will be pre- 

 cisely the same as if the shoots were trained vertically 

 as in fig. 3. In a similar manner, also, a series of 



