376 
ON INCREASING THE SIZE AND NUMBER OF TUBERS. 
sidered that, by checking this aptitude to produce flowers,, he would 
encourage the production of tubers, determined to cut down or thin the 
stems., and so obtained the result he expected, viz. an abundant return 
of tubers. This was an application of science to the practice of gar¬ 
dening which deserves imitation in many other things besides that 
of the culture of the Oxalis. In this instance the treatment was 
doubly advantageous, as the stems, properly dressed, are as much 
esteemed as are the tubers. 
Any practical expedients which may be adopted on this manageable 
property of plants may be classed along with the more common and 
every-day practice of pruning trees, or thinning crops; we destroy or 
take away a portion, to increase or improve what is left. The fruit¬ 
grower improves the size and quality of his crop by judicious and 
timely thinning; the florist obtains large and handsome blossoms by 
preferring the principal buds, and banishing every rival on the same 
stem ; and the seed-grower, in many instances, obtains a purer and 
superior sample of seed by taking a part, rather than the whole, of 
what may be produced. > 
This branch of practical knowledge must be often acted on in the 
management of the grape-vine, as well in the regulation of the shoots 
as to number, as of the fruit as to quantity. Three shoots from one 
root, properly treated during their growth, may, in the next year, yield 
a greater weight of grapes than treble the number of shoots in which 
the powers of the root would be too much diffused, and consequently 
neither bunches nor berries of the full size. It is really astonishing 
how much the powers of a vine may be concentrated, and how unusu¬ 
ally large the wood, leaves, bunches, and berries will become, by 
throwing into a reduced number of shoots the whole vigour of a root. 
Mr. Hoare's method of pruning vines on open walls is a good exem¬ 
plification of this practice; and uncommonly fine grapes are produced 
in vineries, and particularly in pineries, by this treatment of the trees. 
In the last-mentioned houses the White Muscat of Alexandria, and 
the Syrian, (when deemed worthy of a place,) are both grown to an 
immense size of bunches, and berries in proportion. The Syrian is a 
very inferior fruit as to quality, but it is a magnificent ornament to a 
table. A harmless device is sometimes practised in order to have an 
apparently very large bunch, and that is, where two or three bunches 
show closely together, by stopping the main shoot close to the second 
or third, and also the intermediate laterals, the bunches, if they set 
well, will be so close together as to appear like one. Without this 
device we have seen the Syrian grown to the weight of nine pounds. 
The flavour of this grape may be much improved, however, (as all 
