GRAPES. 



This practice will, in all cases, give the greatest dimen- 

 sions of which the bunch is capable. When the bunch 

 is a shouldered one, the shoulders should be expanded 

 and supported by strings, and when finally thinned out, 

 the berries should be kept at such a distance as not only 

 not to touch each other, but to have some considerable 

 space between them. By this means the berries will not 

 only acquire the greatest possible size, but the highest 

 degree of both colour and flavour : besides this, any 

 bunch of grapes, deprived of one third of its original 

 number of berries, by judicious and timely thinning, 

 will weigh fully as much when matured, if not much 

 more, than it would have done had it been left in a state 

 of nature, to say nothing of its vastly superior quality ; 

 the interior and exterior berries possessing an equal de- 

 gree of both colour and flavour. The fellow shoot, 

 which had been cut down to two eyes, will have sent 

 forth two shoots, Vhich must be treated in the same 

 manner as directed for the first two in the preceding 

 summer. 



In the autumn pruning, when the leaves are fallen, 

 the shoot which produced the fruit must be cut out, 

 leaving the two young shoots only, which are to be 

 treated precisely as those had been before, except leaving 

 the long shoot with a few more eyes, in consequence of 

 the increased strength of the plant ; and allowing, per- 

 haps, two bunches to remain from each eye, instead of 

 reducing them to one. 



This mode of pruning and training is applicable prin- 

 cipally to those houses where the rafters only are to be 

 occupied by the vine, as over the pine-pit, or where 

 other crops are cultivated in the body of the house ; but 

 when it is intended to occupy the whole roof, this system 

 may still be adopted, by extending the vine on each side 

 of the rafter, till it meets that from the adjoining one ; or, 

 the vine may be divided at the bottom of the rafter, on 



