24 PRESENT METHOD OF CULTIVATING 



exhausting nature of the process of maturation. At 

 the proper season the pruning knife is appUed, but the 

 operator being in perfect ignorance, as to whether the 

 plant has sufficient strength to ripen any fruit or not 

 in the following year, looks at the young wood, and 

 seeing four or five good strong shoots, cuts them back 

 to as many buds each, leaving, perhaps, twenty in the 

 whole. Summer comes, and the vine having been 

 seriously crippled by the premature ripening of fruit 

 in the precedmg year, and having now twenty shoots 

 to supply with nourishment instead of two or three, 

 the sap is so diminished in quantity, and distributed 

 also through so many channels, that it is incapable of 

 forming an inch of really good bearing-wood. The 

 shoots protrude, and though small, produce a great 

 mass of foliage; the evaporation from this being far 

 too great for its loss to be supplied by the roots, a lan- 

 guid circulation of the juices of the plant takes place, 

 and it receives thereby a most serious check in its 

 growth. The result is, that, at the end of the season, 

 no shoots larger in size than that of a small wooden 

 skewer are to be seen except at the extremities. 



The proper season arriving, the vine is again pruned, 

 and again eight or ten times as many buds are re- 

 tained, as the plant can nourish. The same dispro- 

 portionate mass of foliage follows of course, and the 

 same exhausting effects are produced on the vital 

 powers of the plant. No bearing-shoots are formed 

 except at the extremities, and these being retained at 

 the autumnal pruning, old blank wood begins rapidly 

 to cover the surface of the wall. The method of 

 pruning, also, being, in general, what is called the 

 spur method, tends more than any other to the perma- 

 nent retention of old wood. And thus, the vine com- 

 mences its fruit-bearing life under the most adverse 

 circumstances. 



The same mode of culture being followed in yearly 

 succession, the vine quickly spreads over its allotted 

 place of walling, exceeding, perhaps, two hundred, or 



