THINNING. 273 



age of the vine, and thus the crop is thinned by a whole- 

 sale process of lopping off the superabundance of buds, 

 that would have produced an excess of fruit. Another 

 method of thinning is, to rub out a portion of the shoots, 

 this may be every alternate branch in close jointed vari- 

 eties of the vine : this is to be done soon after the buds 

 have burst, and while the branches are yet quite small, so 

 that the vital forces may be directed to those that remain. 

 Wherever double shoots appear, the weaker should always 

 be removed. 



Still another method of reducing the superabundance, 

 remains to be noticed ; this consists in thinning the grapes 

 themselves, the separate berries, which, in some varieties, 

 are often so crowded upon the bunch, as to prove a serious 

 injury to one another. In hardy out-door culture this is 

 seldom practiced, being less necessary than in the large 

 varieties of foreign grapes that are grown under glass. 

 These are systematically thinned with the scissors, so that 

 none shall crowd together ; and this process, repeated from 

 time to time, is found to produce much finer and larger 

 berries and heavier bunches than when all are left. 



A very rude method has sometimes been pursued in 

 thinning the superabundance of fruit upon apple trees. It 

 appears so very Gothic that its description may only ex- 

 cite a smile, when it is stated that it consists in threshing 

 the tree with a long slender pole, by which a portion of 

 the fruit is cast to the ground. Rude and primitive as 

 this method may appear, it is surely better than no thin- 

 ning at all, and is attended with this good result, for which 

 it deserves some commendation; the threshing removes 

 portions of the excessive twiggy spray that always abounds 

 12* 



