He highly recommends the practice of heading back the canes, during the summer, to a height of from three to five feet, which will cause the side branches to grow vigorously, and interlocking with each other, enable the bushes to support themselves without stakes or wires. These side branches should be shortened during the following spring, so as to give the bushes a pyramidal form. The result of this pruning has been a greater yield of fruit, and of better quality than when he had allowed the bushes to go unpruned. The unpruned bushes would set a greater number of berries, but could not ripen them. The best and earliest fruit was upon the well pruned bushes.
A plantation set with plants propagated from cuttings of healthy young roots will continue to yield good crops from twelve to fifteen years. Mr. Parry says that he planted ten acres on this sandy land which bore good crops of berries for thirteen years, yielding several seasons six hundred and fifty bushels and once eight hundred bushels of fruit.
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THE GRAPE VINE FLEA BEETLE, Haltica Chalybea.
BY W. SAUNDERS, LONDON.
In No. 4, page 62, of the Horticulturist, a correspondent complains of the ravages of the Grape Vine Flea Beetle. This insect has been unusually abundant in many localities this season, and where abundant is always very destructive to the grape vines. Its common name suggests activity, and it is as active in mischief as in movement, hopping during the heat of the day from leaf to leaf and from branch to branch with a speed almost equal to that of its smaller namesake.
FIG. 9.
The Beetle, Fig. 9, survives the winter in the perfect state, lying dormant and torpid under leaves, pieces of bark, or other suitable shelter until called into activity by the reviving warmth of spring. It is a pretty little beetle of a polished steel-blue or green color, sometimes shading into purplish, with a transverse depression across the hinder part of the thorax. The under side is dark green, the antennæ and feet brownish black. Its length is about three-twentieths of an inch, and it has stout robust thighs, by means of which it is able to jump about very briskly. It is more destructive in spring than at any other time, for then before the buds have burst it is astir, with appetite the keener for its long winter fast; and while the tender growth is swelling, this little mischief-maker pounces on it and eats it out to its centre, thus consuming in a short time two or three embryo bunches of grapes.
