UNROLLING MATTING FOR ROOFING THE VINES WITH.
Dr. Guyot’s system of roofing the vines with straw matting, to protect them alike against frosts and hailstorms, is very generally followed in low situations in the Champagne, the value of the wine admitting of so considerable an expense being incurred. This matting, which is made about a foot and a half in width, and in rolls of great length, is fastened either with twine or wire to the vine-stakes; and it is estimated that half a dozen men can fix nearly 11,000 yards of it, or sufficient to roof over 2 ½ acres of vines, during an ordinary day. To carry out the system properly, a double row of tall and short stakes connected with iron wires has to be provided. The matting can then be used as a shelter to the young vines in spring, as a south wall to aid the ripening of the grapes in summer, and as a protection against rain and autumn frosts.
MATTING ARRANGED TO AID THE RIPENING OF THE GRAPES.
MATTING ARRANGED TO PROTECT THE VINES
AGAINST AUTUMN FROSTS.
Owing to the system of cultivation by rejuvenescence, and the constant replenishing of the soil by well-compounded manures, the Champenois wine-growers entertain great hopes that their vineyards will escape the ravages of the phylloxera vastatrix. They certainly deserve such an immunity, for, according to Dr. Plonquet of Ay, they are already the prey of no less than fifteen varieties of insects, which feed upon the leaves, stalks, roots, or fruit of the vines. One of the most destructive of these is the eumolpe, gribouri, or écrivain as it is popularly styled, from the traces it leaves upon the vine-leaves bearing some resemblance to lines of writing. It is a species of beetle, the larvæ of which pass the winter amongst the roots of the vine, and in the spring attack the young leaves and buds, their ravages often proving fatal to the plant. Then there is the chabot, which has caused great destruction at Verzy and Verzenay; the attelabe, cunche, or bêche, which rolls up the leaves of the vine like cigars, and seems to be identical with the hurebet or urbec of the Middle Ages; and the cochylis, teigne, or vintage-worm, which develops into a white-and-black butterfly, producing in the course of the year two generations of larvæ, having the form of small red caterpillars, one of which attacks the blossoms of the vine, while the second pierces and destroys the grapes themselves. The list of foes further comprises the altise, a kind of beetle allied to the gribouri; the liset or coupe-bourgeon, a tiny worm assailing the first sprouting shoots; and the hanneton or cockchafer.