83 
veiling space is dug deeply, some of the newly-turned soil 
serves to cover the top-dressing. This mode of top-dressing 
must be repeated annually. Winter pruning now demands 
attention. The length at which canes may be left depends 
much on their strength ; five feet, however, may be given as an 
average to which they should be reduced, in November. No 
further attention is required till April, or at least until the shoots 
have budded an inch in length; when the bands should be 
untied, preparatory to a completion of the pruning, and all 
superfluous suckers cut away. 
We consider four canes sufficient at all times ; five, however, 
should be the maximum. At this pruning we cut all the canes, 
but one, back to various lengths : thus, one remains of its full 
length, as left in November; the second is reduced six inches ; 
the third, one foot; and the fourth, eighteen inches. By this 
method, the young fruiting shoots are more equally distributed, 
from the bottom to the top of the bushes ; besides which, their 
fruit is produced in succession three weeks beyond the ordinary 
season. The double-bearing kinds are very liable to be crowded 
with a profusion of suckers; all superfluous ones must therefore 
be weeded out during the summer, leaving only those required for 
bearing. Their culture differs materially from that of the large 
kinds, inasmuch as the old canes must all be cut away, close to 
the ground, in April ; and the suckers rising at that time must be 
thinned considerably; this annual wood becomes the bearing 
wood, indeed this constitutes their chief merit. 
301 The Black Currant. A soil permanently moist, but not 
wet, is, as observed previously, the prime desideratum in the 
culture of the Black Currant: a dark-coloured unctuous loam is 
peculiarly adapted to its culture. We have, however, seen it 
succeed to admiration in highly decomposed peaty or boggy 
soils, after the superfluous water has been drained away. Such 
boggy lands require an application of marl or clay, in a pow- 
dered state, to give them consistence, and to provide against the 
vicissitudes in regard to moisture, to which boggy soils are well 
known to be liable. Dry gravelly, or sandy soils, are the least 
suitable, and it is in vain to plant the Black Currant on such, 
unless they are previously improved by those substances which 
are at once retentive of moisture and furnish nutrition, such as 
marl, adhesive loam, and old vegetable matter. In such soils, or 
28S. AUCTARIDM. 
