SYSTEMS OF PRUNING AND TRAINING. 



179 



tern, at the next pruning there would be no huds from 

 which to produce new bearing wood at the base of the 

 cane, C, and the vine would become an almost worthless 

 stump. I should not have thought it worth while to 

 again refer to this old and unscientific mode of training 

 vines, had I not noticed several similar ones recently 

 described in essays on grape culture, reminding me that 

 ideas, however absurd, often attain a great age. 



In one very large work published only last year 

 (1893), I find an illustration of what is called a "Re- 

 newal System," but in the vine represented the annual 

 canes spring from two arms, as I have shown in Fig. 44, 



nr 



FIG. (54. 



Jpn a preceding page ; but only alternate canes are shown 

 In bearing fruit in this new renewal system. There is, 

 however, no explanation of the why or wherefore of such 

 a system of training, in the book to which I refer, and I 

 can only account for the alternate fruiting canes, except 

 upon the supposition that the inventor thought it was 

 better to allow five canes to bear the entire crop, than to 

 distribute evenly among nine. But the difficulty with 

 all such systems is, that the vine is thrown out of bal- 

 ance, and the sap is drawn into the barren canes, to the 

 detriment of those producing fruit. A similar unequal 

 distribution of the sap will occur where one cane is left 



I 



