Page:A Treatise on the Culture of the Vine and, and the Art of Making Wine.pdf/133

 from the trunk, or stock of the dwarf vine, thus the fruit-bearing branches should issue, those which are lowest being always preferred, if their inclination is not such, as to expose the fruit to the contact of the ground.

At the fourth year, a well planted vine has acquired strength to give fruit—two eyes may be left on two or three of the strongest shoots. The pruning in the fifth season, still requires particular management; two eyes should be left only on the strongest of the new wood, and that which has less vigour, should retain only one; the whole number of the branches of young wood thus left, should not exceed five. The young plant has now become a made vine.

The care of the cultivator, must not, however, be relaxed;—the same principles which have hitherto directed him, should guide him in future;—but the plant, having acquired more vigour, will require more minute attention in the pruning.

There are circumstances by which he must be guided, in leaving a greater quantity of bearing branches, or retrenching their number: these are, the nature of the climate, the exposure, the nature of the soil, the vigour of the plant, the quality of the wood formed the preceding year. The age of the vine ought, also, to be considered, and the kind to which