to about three to three and a half feet above the
ground. The vines, being young and vigorous, pushed out the laterals
vigorously, each of them making a fair-sized cane. In the fall, when I
came to prune them, the main cane was not long enough, and I merely
shortened in the laterals to from four to six buds each. On these I had
as fine a crop of grapes as I ever saw, fine, large, well-developed
bunches and berries, and a great many of them, as each had produced its
fruit-bearing shoot. Since that time I have followed this method
altogether, and obtained the most satisfactory results.

The ground should be kept even and mellow during the summer, and the
vines neatly tied to the trellis with bast or straw.

There are many other methods of training; for instance, the old bow and
stake training, which is followed to a great extent around Cincinnati,
and was followed to some extent here. But it crowds the whole mass of
fruit and leaves together so closely that mildew and rot will follow
almost as a natural consequence, and those who follow it are almost
ready to give up grape-culture in despair. Nor is this surprising. With
their tenacious adherence to so fickle a variety as the Catawba, and to
practices and methods of which experience ought to have taught them the
utter impracticability long ago, we need not be surprised that
grape-culture is with them a failure. We have a class of grape-growers
who never learn, nor ever forget, anything; these we cannot expect
should prosper. The grape-grower, of all others, should be a close
observer of nature in her various moods, a thinking and a reasoning
being; he should be trying and experimenting all the time, and be ready
always to throw aside his old methods, should he find that another will
more fully meet the wants of his plants. Only thus can he expect to
prosper.

There is also the arm system, of which we hear so much now-a-days, and
which certainly looks very pretty _on paper_. But paper is patient, and
while it cannot be denied that it has its advantages, if every spur and
shoot could be made to grow just as represented in drawings, with three
fine bunches to each shoot; yet, upon applying it practically, we find
that vines are stubborn, and some shoots will outgrow others; and
before we hardly know how, the whole beautiful system is out of order.
It may do to follow in gardens, on arbors and walls, with a few vines,
but I do not think that it will ever be successfully fo