290 Transactions oftTie Horticultural Society. 



" When vines are trained with more than one cordon, it is 

 evident from what has ah'eady been said, that the lower tiers 

 will eventually become enfeebled by the more powerful vege- 

 tation and shade of those above them ; but when the vine is 

 limited to one cordon, it maintains that one in vigour under 

 any such circumstances of privation. 



" Might not training on these principles, if accommodated to 

 their peculiar natures, be applied with advantage to our pear 

 -trees on walls, and apple trees on espaliers; it would pro- 

 bably counteract their tendency to run naked at the lower 

 parts and centre, and bear only at the extremities. 



" When pruning their vines, the vignerons avoid cutting 

 close to the eyes, lest they might be injured by the wood 

 dying down to them ; the wood of the vine, from its spongy 

 nature and the peculiarity of its alburnum, not healing 

 readily, and being liable to decay at a wound. To guard 

 against this, they always cut midway between the eyes, 

 sloping the cut to the opposite side of the shoot, so that the 

 eye may not be damaged by its bleeding. They are also careful 

 to inflict no wounds unnecessarily, and those they do make 

 they finish off in the neatest manner. 



" The season they generally prefer for the winter pruning is 

 from the beginning of February to the beginning of March, 

 before the first movement of the sap takes place. The 

 earliest pruned vines are found to break first." 



Summer Pruning or Training. — Cut out weak shoots, un- 

 less any should become necessary to replace failures in the 

 spurs. 



" As premature summer pruning is productive of the same 

 bad effects as follow late summer trainino^, in occasioning; 

 wasteful bursts of sap, it is considered prudent, before the 

 stronger shoots are cleared off, to wait until the wood has ac- 

 quired some consistence, and until new channels are prepared 

 for the expenditure of the sap by the expansion of the 

 leaves." 



Stripping a plant of its leaves and shoots suddenly always 

 gives a shock to its vegetation, and therefore should be very 

 carefully and gradually performed, until the grapes are set. 



Pinching or Stopinng the Young Wood. — This accelerates 

 the maturity of the shoots, and swells the buds of the spurs. 

 At Thomery the young wood is pinched after the bud is set. 

 " Should it appear that the shoots of the extremities im- 

 poverish those of the centre, the former are pinched repeated!}'- 

 until the equilibrium is restored. 



" When the vignerons of Thomery, before the adoption 

 of the present system, during a period of thirty years, made a 



