16 



ENVIRONS OF XERES. 



renewing his vineyards, the vines having been destroyed 

 in many places by a very destructive insect— a small 

 white worm, with a black head, which eats into the heart 

 of the old stock and destroys it : vines, he said, which 

 would have been good for 150 years, were thus rendered 

 useless — they were now 40 years old : he attributed it to 

 injudicious pruning. It was customary to cut off the 

 bearing branch close to the old wood ; by this means the 

 worm either obtained an entrance to the heart of the stock 

 full grown, or was deposited in the egg, on the decayed 

 part, and worked its way in when formed. A footing once 

 obtained, there was no mode of getting rid of it, and the 

 consequence was that the vines became every year more 

 injured in health, till they were at length incapable of 

 yielding a crop. The system which Don Pedro adopted 

 in pruning was to leave one knot of the branch cut 

 off, which prevented the entrance of the insect into the 

 stock. 



His mode of pruning differed from what we had pre- 

 viously observed : instead of leaving only one, or at most 

 two knots on each of three or four branches, as was the 

 case in the other vineyards we had examined, he left one 

 branch with seven or eight knots, and two others with 

 one knot each, pruning them down alternately ; he did 

 not consider that this was burthcning a young and healthy 

 vine too much ; he was in the habit of manuring his vine- 

 yards, but not each year in the same place. He consi- 

 dered it a disadvantage to have many varieties, and was 

 confining his new plantations to three or four. He said 

 that all the varieties mentioned by Roxas Clemente were 

 to be found in the vineyards of Xeres, but the proprietors 

 were all anxious to make it be believed that their vine- 

 yards contained only the most celebrated sorts. Don Pedro 



