14 



designations should be chosen, and the value of the characteristics 

 taken to calculate upon, should be fixed and established. 



The roots are partly penetrating, partly running, and thickly fring- 

 ed with capillary threads. The stem is cylindrical, thin in proportion 

 to its length, and requires support. When young, the stem is more 

 or less strongly divided and marked by joints or bends. A smgle 

 plant of the vine is sometimes termed a slip, sometimes a stock ; the 

 latter name is more particularly given to that part of the vine which 

 answers to the trzink in trees ; in the wild state, there is no certain 

 rate of length or thickness, both seeming to depend on accident ; but 

 they are regulated by the vine-dresser, according to his mode of cul- 

 tivation. The stock when young, is covered with a green or tawny 

 bark, which becomes brown with age ; it is uneven in thickness, and 

 irregular in adherence to the wood ; most frequently seamed and split 

 lengthwise, and loosened from the wood in long, narrow layers or over- 

 lapping parcels, which are in the end entirely started and swept away 

 by the wind and rain. In cold countries the bark is more compact, 

 and more even. 



From the stock or trunk, spring the shoots or branches, stem-like, 

 sometimes forked, smooth; of a reddish grey in the woody fibre, and 

 green in the herbaceous portion ; their number very various, and the 

 length indeterminate, only, that those growing upward, are shorter 

 than the lateral shoots which run horizontally ; and these again are 

 shorter than the lowermost, which trail on the ground. The thick- 

 ness is generally proportionate to that of the stock or trunk. In the 

 shoots of the season, or yearling branches, the pith fills the whole ring 

 of the woody part ; the next year the wood is thicker and the pith 

 less ; the third year, there is only a trace of pith, and in the fourth 

 year the wood is solid. 



The short twigs springing from the principal branches, are termed 

 secondaries or second-shoots ; if the sap be poor and scanty, there will 

 be, on the shoots, many buds or beads which perhaps do not unfold at 

 all ; but if the juices of the plants are plentiful and vigorous, the sap 

 swells and drives all these buds into second-shoots of considerable 

 length, which bear fruit as well as the shoots proper. Young vines, 

 and those that have been topped by any accident, are hable to bear a 

 great many of these second-shoots. 



On the shoot we find the leaves, the fruit, in bunches opposite the 

 leaves, and the tendrils by which it clings to other objects to support 

 itself. Sometimes the shoot terminates in a small bunch, the berries 

 of which are small, crowded, and generally round. 



The leaves are mostly largest nearest the stock, and diminish in 



