ON THE PRUNING OF VINES. 77 



these will be almost useless, being but imperfectly 

 formed, and therefore seldom producing fruit. Only 

 the uppermost bud can be depended upon to show 

 fruit, and, consequently, in order to insure the produc- 

 tion of as many bunches of fruit as the single shoot 

 Avill bear, not less than twenty spurs must be pro- 

 vided. This is the parent of many evils. First, 

 these spurs if joined together would be nearly three 

 times the length of a single shoot; the surface of the 

 wall, therefore, which they occupy, will yield only 

 one third of the quantity of fruit produced from that 

 on which the single shoot is trained. Secondly, the 

 latter can be nailed to the wall w'lXh Jive nails, where- 

 as the twenty spurs will require twenty nails, and as 

 many holes will be made in the joints of the wall by 

 driving them in. This evil is not a light one. More- 

 over, a fourfold degree of trouble and lime will be re- 

 quired to nail and unnail these spurs, beyond that 

 necessary for the single shoot. Thirdly, the fruit 

 produced from the latter will be far superior both in size 

 and flavor to that borne by the spurs, for this reason ; — 

 the best grapes are uniformly produced from the 

 fullest-sized and best-ripened buds, and these are gen- 

 erated on the shoots, from the beginning of May to 

 the middle of July, and in moderately vigorous vines, 

 range in order on each shoot, from the fourth bud to 

 about the twentieth ; but if a vine be well established 

 and very vigorous in its growth, it will, under a judi- 

 cious system of pruning, produce on a single shooi, 

 from twenty-five to thirty buds within that space of 

 time. If a shoot be spurred, therefore, to three buds, 

 it will contain yione, and if to/oz/r, only one of these 

 well-ripened buds, all the rest will have been cut off' 

 in the pruning ; or, what is tantamount to it, the 

 shoots will have been pinched back in the early part 

 of the summer, just as the vine was entering its most 

 vigorous state of vegetation, and about to generate the 

 very best description of fruit-buc^s. 



Secondly, the cutting down of a single shoot in 

 autumn to one or two buds, in order that it may pro- 



