HIGH TRAINING. 



267 



Laon, the vines are attached to low stakes or trellices raised 

 only about a foot above the ground. In the departments of 

 Bouches-du-Rhone, Aube, Gard, Herault, and in fact in most 

 of the southern departments, the stocks are very wide apart, 

 and are allowed to be but two feet in height, and the fruit 

 branches are trained along at about the same elevation. In 

 some vineyards the stocks are very short, and so strong that 

 they support themselves, and the young shoots rise from them 

 and fall over to the earth. In other districts the vines are left 

 entirely to trail on the ground, but the wines, as has been al- 

 ready stated, are in such cases inferior and the crops much less. 

 In the young vineyards near Bordeaux, Angers, Lyons, &tc. 

 where the plants were formerly left unsupported, they have 

 adopted the use of props on account of the great vigour and 

 length of the shoots. 



High training. 



In adopting the practice of high training according to either 

 of the modes in use, it is requisite that the varieties selected 

 as well as the plants themselves be of a vigorous character, and 

 that the soil be rich and capable of supporting the additional 

 growth required. At the commencement of this species of 

 culture, the strongest shoot only is left to each vine at the 

 first pruning with about a foot of the new wood, and all the 

 buds or eyes except the two uppermost are rubbed off and de- 

 stroyed. At each subsequent pruning one additional branch 

 is left with two eyes to each until the fourth pruning, when 

 four or five shoots may be left, the vine having attained the 

 desired height. If the soil is not highly favourable you must 

 in succeeding years adopt the same system of pruning as pre- 

 scribed for short pruned vines, but if it is of excellent quality, 

 and the other circumstances also favourable, you may leave 

 two or three shoots of eighteen to twenty-four inches in length, 

 with all their eyes upon them, which must be curved or bent 

 over and tied with the ends downwards to the several props. 



High trained vines are less subject to injury by frost and 

 produce more fruit, but the wine made from them is in general 



