he old wood of the vine as soon as the trunk
begins to show a gnarled appearance.

_Shelling._

In eastern America, especially in the Chautauqua grape-belt,
grape-growers not infrequently lose a large part of the crop by the
premature falling of the grapes from the stems. The trouble is an
ancient one and is designated as "shelling" or "rattling." This
premature dropping usually begins at the end of a cluster, and
clusters farthest from the trunk are earliest affected. When vineyards
suffer badly from this shelling, the vines often take on a sickly
appearance, the foliage falling off in color and the outer margins of
the leaves drying up more or less. The fallen fruit has an insipid
taste and is, of course, worthless even if it could be harvested.

The cause of the trouble is not known. Grapes may "rattle" on high
land or low land, on poor soil or rich soil, on heavy or light soil. A
vineyard may be affected one year and not the next. Grape-growers
usually attribute the trouble to faulty nutrition, but applications of
fertilizers have not proved a preventive. Old and well-established
vineyards seem freer from the trouble than new and poorly established
plantings. The most reasonable theory as to the cause of shelling is
that it comes from faulty nutrition of the vine, but the conditions so
affecting the nutrition are not yet satisfactorily determined.

_Diseases of minor importance._

Ripe-rot or bitter-rot (_Glomerella rufomaculans_) is a disease due to
the same fungus causing the bitter-rot of the apple. As the name
indicates, the disease usually appears on the fruit at ripening time
and under favorable conditions continues after the grapes are picked.
It may also attack the leaves and stems. The first indication of the
fungus is the appearance of reddish-brown spots which spread and
eventually cover the whole fruit. The berries do not shrivel, but the
rotted surface becomes dotted with pustules in which the spores are
borne. It is hard to tell how much damage this disease does, but it is
not usually great and the late applications of bordeaux mixture for
black-rot or powdery-mildew are very effective in controlling it.

Crown-gall, now known to be a bacterial disease which causes knots or
galls on the roots of various wild and cultivated plants, sometimes
attacks grape roots or even the vines above ground. Occasionally, the
disease is rather serious, but it is not often to be reckoned with in
the vineyard regi