e fifteen pounds on a
vine, therefore, will require from thirty to sixty bunches. As each
shoot will bear two or three bunches, from fifteen to thirty buds must
be left on the canes of the preceding year. These buds are selected in
pruning on one or more canes distributed on one or two main stems in
such manner as the pruner may choose, but usually in accordance with
one or another of several well-developed methods of training. Pruning,
then, consists in calculating the number of bunches and buds necessary
and removing the remainder. In essence pruning is thinning.

_Horizontal_ versus _perpendicular canes._

An old dictum of viticulture is that the nearer the growing parts of
the vine approach the perpendicular, the more vigorous the parts. The
terminal buds, as every grape-grower knows, grow very rapidly and
probably absorb, unless checked, more than their share of the energy
of the vine. This tendency can be checked somewhat by removing the
terminal buds, which also helps to keep the plants within manageable
limits, but is better controlled by training the canes to horizontal
positions. Grape canes are tied horizontally to wires to make the
vines more manageable and to reduce their vigor and so induce
fruitfulness; they are trained vertically to increase the vigor of the
vine.

_Winter-pruning._

Winter-pruning of the vineyard may be done at any time from the
dropping of the leaves in the autumn to the swelling of the buds in
the spring. The sap begins to circulate actively in the grape early in
the spring, even to the extremities of the vine, and most
grape-growers believe this sap to be a "vital stream" and that, if the
vine is pruned during its flow, the plant will bleed to death. The
vine, however, is at this season of so dropsical a constitution that
the loss of sap is better denominated "weeping" than "bleeding." It is
doubtful whether serious injury results from pruning after the sap
begins to flow, but it is a safe practice to prune earlier and the
work is certainly pleasanter. The vine should not be pruned when the
wood is frozen, since at this time the canes are brittle and easily
broken in handling. On the other hand, it is well to delay pruning in
northern climates until after a heavy freeze in the autumn, to
winterkill and wither immature wood so that it can be removed in
pruning.

[Illustration: PLATE IX.--Campbell Early (x2/3).]

_Summer-pruning._

There are three kinds of summer-pruning, the