364 
WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
learned essays on the various modes of treating the vines, I 
must be permitted to believe that the elaborate directions that 
have entered into the technology of this subject, have tended to 
cod fuse rather than to enlighten the common farmer. After 
reading a score or two of small-type pages on the favorite 
mode of the writer in planting, training, trimming and car¬ 
ing for the vines, he very naturally comes to the conclusion 
that he has struck a subject too great for his spare time — if 
not even too intricate and abstruse for his understanding. 
Hence he drops the pamphlet in despair, and dismisses the 
subject from his mind; whereas, if the writer had told him, 
in plain, terse English, to procure his well rooted layers; plow 
his ground well; plant his vines with no more display than 
would be necessary to plant a currant bush; let the vines 
have their own way the first season, after covering the ground 
six inches deep with straw to keep the weeds in check ; prune 
back in the fall to one or two canes and one or two eyes; 
cover well with straw just before freezing commences; tie 
up to trellis in the spring; let nature do her best during the 
summer ; and in subsequent years when the vines are strong, 
summer-prune just sufficiently (giving no special directions) 
to let in the air and light between the rows, which should be 
not less than five feet apart, and the “ hills ” some eight feet 
apart; and have left the farmer to find out by his own observa¬ 
tion what is necessary to know besides, the great scare-crow in 
grape raising would vanish. 
The above are essentially all the directions necessary to en¬ 
cumber the novitiate with. If he is an observing man, he will 
soon learn the peculiar habits of the vine, and will adapt their 
ever varying peculiarities to special local causes; for it is an 
admitted fact that the same species of vines require somewhat 
different treatment indifferent localities, and even in the same 
vineyard. Hence no general line of specific instructions as to 
all the minutiae can be safely given or followed. 
As experimental facts are more valuable than theoretical 
problems, I will give a history of my own experience—too 
