Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/216

 their beautiful estate at Camden. In other parts of the colony I have seen small vineyards, where the vines were trained on trellisses, constructed according to the plan recommended by the late Mr. Shepherd, and they looked very well. In Italy vines are often planted at the foot of low-sized forest trees, and allowed to climb up them unrestrained. The trees generally employed for this purpose are elms and sycamores. In some parts of the south of France, in the valleys near the foot of the Alps and Pyrenees, this mode of training the vine is sometimes resorted to; only the French are more careful than the Italians, as they keep the trees well trimmed, and carry the vines in festoons from one tree to another. In New South Wales the lower slopes of fertile ranges are very frequently lightly wooded by the Angophora lanceolata, or colonial apple-tree. As sites near the subsidence of ranges are those which would be best suited for vines in that colony, might not these trees, which are low-sized and gnarled, be available for the same purposes as the elms and sycamores of Italy and France? In France, during the winter, the ground between the vines is generally broken up by the plough, although the hoe or the spade is sometimes used for that purpose. This operation should be performed as soon after the vintage as possible, the branches being first removed so as to offer no impediment. It is not necessary to go deeper than eight or ten inches, and in a dry country like New South Wales,