REVIEW OF PRUNING AND TRAINING. 257 



two at the right hand of the figure are shown with the five 

 side-shoots on each side, as they are produced from the 

 alternate buds on the cane. These side-shoots or spurs, as 

 we will now call them, are supposed to produce two or 

 three bunches each, making from twenty to thirty bunches 

 apiece. Every year these are cut back to within one or 

 two buds of the uprights, in a similar manner to those on 

 the horizontal arm. The two upright canes on the left- 

 hand arm are shown with spurs exactly opposite, which is 

 the usual manner of showing them in illustrating the sys- 

 tem ; but to produce them in this manner, it would require 

 five years to perfect the five pairs of spurs ; because it 

 would be necessary to stop the vine while growing at each 

 point where the spurs are wanted, or prune it back to that 

 point and then make the terminal bud produce two shoots 

 for each pair of spurs ; and by the time the upper pair are 

 produced, the lower ones will have failed, in consequence of 

 the flow of sap to the top of the vine ; and just here is the 

 point where all such systems fail. No matter whether 

 you take one year or ten to perfect them, the result is the 

 same, as no cane of four to six feet long will bear regularly 

 from one end to the other when trained perpendicularly. 

 It may be distorted in any manner you choose, but the 

 nearer it approaches the horizontal the more uniform and 

 regular will be the results. 



THOMERY SYSTEM. 



The Thomery system of growing and training the grape 

 was perfected about a hundred years ago, at the village of 

 Thomery, in France ; hence its name. Its invention prob- 

 ably owes its origin to the peculiarities of the situation 

 and soil at Thomery, which compelled its founders to adopt 

 extraordinary means to bring about results which have 

 been obtained in many other parts of the country with 

 only a moderate outlay in the beginning, and much less 



