Page:A Treatise on the Culture of the Vine and, and the Art of Making Wine.pdf/120

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

its grosser parts are volatilized, beneficial to the young plants.

While the soil is in the course of preparation, the larger stones should be collected, and these may be usefully employed for enclosures; or, if the ground is steep, for forming terraces, to prevent the soil from being carried down by the rain. Where there are no stones to form enclosures, even ditches are recommended, in preference to live hedges, which ought never to be allowed to exceed three feet in height.

The most common methods of propagating vines, are by cuttings, by rooted plants, and by layers. Of these methods, that by cuttings is most recommended, and most generally practised. A good cutting should consist of a shoot of one year's growth, together with a small piece of the older wood attached to it; not that this adds in any respect to its goodness, but because it shows, that one shoot bas not been divided into several cuttings, as those buds nearest the bottom send forth the strongest shoots.

Rooted plants, which are cuttings prepared for two or three years in a nursery or garden, are generally found to languish so much, from the change of soil, and from the injuries the very minute and numerous fibres of the roots have sus-