VI. LIST OF FRUITS. 



fig. 2 ; and now you must prune, which is the all-im- 

 portant part of the business. Observe, and bear in 

 mind, that little or no fruit ever comes on a grape-vine, 

 except on young shoots that come out of wood of the 

 last year. All the four last year's shoots that you find in 

 Jig. 2. would send out bearers ; but if you suffer that, 

 you will have a great parcel of small wood, and little or 

 no fruit next year. Therefore, cut off four of tha last 

 year's shoots, as at b. (fig. 3.) leaving only one bud. The 

 four other shoots will send out a shoot from every one 

 of their buds, and if the vine be strong, there will be 

 two bunches of grapes on each of these young shoots j 

 and, as the last year's shoots are supposed to be each 

 eight feet long, and as there generally is a bud at, or 

 about, every half foot, every last year's shoot will pro- 

 duce thirty-two bunches of grapes j every vine 128 

 bunches j and the twelve vines 1536 ; and, possibly, 

 I nay, probably, so many pounds of grapes ! Is this in- 

 credible ? Take, then, this well-known fact, that there 

 is a grape-vine, a single vine, with only one stem, in the 

 , King's gardens, at his palace of Hampton Court, which 

 has, for, perhaps, half a century, produced on an average, 

 annually, a ton of grapes ; that is to say, 2,240 pounds, 

 avordupois weight. That vine covers a space of about 

 forty feet in length, and twenty in breadth. However, 

 s> ^e you have only a fifth part of what you might 

 hav~, . JTr^red bunches of grapes are worth a great 

 deal more than the annual trouble, which is, indeed, very 

 little. Fig. 4 shows a vine in summer. You see the four 

 shoots bearing, and four other shoots coming on for the 

 next year, from the butts left at the winter pruning, as 



(at 6. These four latter you are to tie to the bars as they 

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