114 
THE FLORIST AND POMOLOGIST. 
[ May, 
These second shoots are called laterals, or summer lateral shoots, as shown in 
Chapter IV., fig. 2, E. (1874, p. 29). They should be stopped in the same way 
immediately beyond the first leaf, as at «, and so on again and again throughout 
the season, as they may continue to grow. 
The leading shoot of a young Vine is, of course, to be exempted from this 
stopping, excepting in so far as relates to the laterals it produces; and these, if 
space is limited, must be stopped in the manner just explained, or they may be 
trained out in the same manner as the proper shoots, and allowed to extend and 
occupy as much space as may be available. It should always be borne in mind that 
the greater the quantity of properly developed leaves and shoots, the more power¬ 
ful must be the root-action, and the more vigorous the plant. The stopping of 
the shoots of a Vine should not in any sense be considered as a checking or 
repressing of its vigour, but rather as a guiding or directing of its energies into 
certain channels of a more desirable and beneficial character than they would 
follow if left to themselves.—A. F. Barron, Chiswick. 
THE ECONOMY OF LABOUR IN GARDENS. 
l ULL fifty years ago, edges of raw earth were in full vogue as the boundary¬ 
lines of grass lawns, verges, &c., adjoining walks, drives, and other roads 
about a nobleman’s or gentleman’s grounds and gardens,—that is to say, 
almost the whole of the grass edgings were cut with an edging-knife, 
instead of with the shears, once or twice in the year, but more particularly in 
spring, when the walks and roads were repaired or renovated. Then the line 
was placed, and the knife or edging-iron set to work, to pare off a thin slice, 
leaving an even but raw edging, on which the frost, the dry weather, and 
the parching winds might each exert their influence, as they did most effectually, 
mellowing, pulverising, and loosening the earth, for the worms to cast up, 
the ants to work through and through, the birds to scratch down, and the heavy 
hasty rains and rapid storms to wash away, in order to choke the drains, leaving 
the soft sediment to settle in the low uneven spots about the walk or road, there 
to form seed-beds upon which the seeds of grass or weeds that may also have 
been washed down, might vegetate luxuriantly ; or in dry, hot weather, to crack 
and curl up into skin-thick flakes of dirt. At all events, during the whole 
year it was but a sorry unsightly edging, for where the soil was stocked with the 
roots of our wild convolvulus, dandelion, or other obnoxious plants, they would 
assuredly thrust themselves through, to show their pretty or gaudy flowers, and 
to seed, too, if left a short time. To be sure, there were here and there to be 
found little places where by the patient use of large sheep-shears or hedge-shears, 
for clipping the grass edgings, instead of cutting them with the edging-knife, 
they were tolerably neatly kept, but such cases were exceptional. 
Some forty years since or more, in Loudon’s Gardeners’ Magazine —which was 
about the only horticultural work in those days in which there was any chance 
of exposing an abuse, or of relating any useful or practical facts in the way of 
