Oct.] 



THE FORCING GARDEN. 



777 



Wilh a view to reduce these ideas to practice, he phmted 

 five vines at the ends of a house twenty-five feet in lenf^th 

 which for this purpose was provided with rods placed hori- 

 zontally under the glass of the roof, twenty inches asunder, 

 and extending from end to end. The first vine, placed at one 

 end, being trained up to the two lower rods, a shoot of it was 

 laid along each of them, and continued successively from year 

 to year till it reached the other end ; then the shoot on the 

 lower rod was turned upwards to the next, and led back upon 

 it towards the stem of the tree, whilst that on the upper rod 

 was turned down, and led back in like manner on the lower 

 one. During this process, a sufficient number of spurs or 

 short branches were left annually on the old wood to produce 

 fruit. When the leading shoots, which had been thus trained 

 in a retrograde direction, approached towards the end, whence 

 the original branches proceeded, preparation was made for a 

 succession of young wood, by bringing forward two fresh 

 shoots fi'om the stem of the tree, and leading them along 

 close to the preceding ones. As these, and the leading shoots 

 of the first branches, were then on their return advancing, the 

 spurs on that part of the old wood to which they had reached 

 were cut out to make room for them, the naked stem only 

 being left. When the second series of branches had returned 

 nearly to the end at which the trunk was situated, the first 

 series, on which there was then but little of the herbage re- 

 maining, was cut out at the trunk. Fresh shoots were then 

 brought forward to succeed the second scries ; and so on 

 without end. It would be superfluous to dwell on the mode 

 of managing the other trees, as it will be perceived that, on 

 following the same principle, they must be laid along the 

 higher rods in succession, two rods being allowed to each 

 tree ; and when the stem is not at the end of the house, two 

 branches are to be trained eastward and two westwai'd along 

 the rod. This, in a house of twenty-five feet in length, in- 

 stead of having only fifteen or sixteen feet to admit of the 

 length of a branch, as would be the case under the usual 

 mode of training across the house, we have a range of thirty 

 feet, which affords ample scope for the long shoots at the 

 extremities : and these I find, when laid in the horizontal 



