The present "age," especially the period of it we have reached, is strikingly characterised by a sifting of theories, principles, and practices. What have long been held as settled truths, are passing through the crucial ordeal of bold and startling investigation. In regard to the cultivation of the Grape-vine, a similar ordeal is being applied. I am one of those who believe that truth has nothing to fear from the sifting process; the chaff will be scattered, and the truth made more evident, and be more firmly settled on an intelligent basis.

Looking, however, at present into the many theories (bearing on the treatment of the Vine) that are being advanced, they are plentiful enough, one would imagine, to lead even the experienced cultivator into a maze of bewilderment, while the position of the beginner must be one difficult to realise. Doubtless, amid all the din of the discussion there is secure and positive advancement, though some practical experience is certainly needed in order to separate the golden ore of ascertained facts from the dust with which it is mingled.

One Vine-grower literally kills the whole of the Vines he has attempted to cultivate on the single-rod, or, as it is now termed, restrictive, system; and forthwith he rushes into print, condemns the single-rod system, and writes a pamphlet to convert growers to the big Vine, or extension system, as the panacea for all the ills the Vine is heir to. On the other hand, our preceptor is informed by another authority that bad management had caused the premature death of his Vines, grown as single rods. Another authority reads a paper at a horticultural congress on the evil effects of soil taken from the magnesian limestone, and demonstrates unmistakably that he has failed to satisfy himself with Grape crops from such a soil; and lo! clear as appears to be his own proposition to himself, yet another authority labours to show that Vines and other fruit-trees thrive to the greatest perfection in the very soil the other so forcibly condemns. This second writer treats us northern bodies to a piece of news (in order to prove the fallacy of the one-rod or restrictive system, and to uphold the extension theory), by telling us that a set of celebrated Vines in Galloway had fallen into a sad plight, notwithstanding the very wonderful influence of aeration.

This arouses another combatant, suffering from some symptoms of the Vine-decline epidemic; and he shouts across the borders, Goliath-like, to the cultivator of the supposed-to-be-deceased Vines, to let him know that his Vines are "nae deed," but "all a-growing, all a-blowing;" and that by means of a current of wind carried through below their roots, the Vines would be made to absorb so much gas as would enable them to produce splendid bunches of Grapes.

Turning to the question of pruning, another advocates the cut-to-the-best bud, or cow-horn system. This the next combatant repudiates, and maintains that the neatest Vines and most useful bunches are produced by the close-spurring system. I knew of a smart English practical gardener coming down to the banks of the Clyde to take charge of a garden, and his neighbour found him in his vinery one morning cutting off all the long spurs from the Vines that had for years been cow-horned, and, of course, leaving not a bud to be depended on. "This," the operator said to his neighbour - " this is what we call spurring in the south;" and got for reply, "By George ! and it's spurring in the north too." And so the two systems are still adhered to, and upheld as correct by their respective advocates.

About the growth and action of roots the manifestoes are quite as uncertain; one insists that growth first commences in the branches, another maintains that the roots start into growth first - he is certain of it, for he has seen it, and seeing is believing. A third asserts that under his good management the Vines (which in some hands are so obstinately stupid) start into activity simultaneously at both ends; while a writer from the banks of Kith tries to make it clear that you can almost say to either wood or roots, "Grow first!" and it groweth ; and maintains that roots are very much the creatures of circumstances, and that writers should not be too dogmatic, seeing that our knowledge of vegetable physiology is of a somewhat imperfect character.

I might go on to show how almost every point connected with Grapegrowing is a matter for dispute by different cultivators who are reputed and recognised authorities; but enough has been said to show how very widely authorities differ on this as on other important matters, and that a sifting process is going on which is much to be preferred either to a stagnation of thought or the promulgation of merely stereotyped ideas. One of the chief objects of cultivators should be to assist beginners to pick up some crumbs of true and correct practice, as circumstances will admit of its being done.

With regard to the one-Vine, or modifications of the one-Vine, system, it must be patent to all that its advocates can only point to a very few instances of cultivation in that character as successful examples, and these under rather exceptional circumstances. One might count them all on the fingers of the hands. There are a few of these monster Vines well used to illustrate the idea that by letting Vines have plenty of scope at root and branch, long-lived Vines are obtained that bear ordinary - very ordinary - crops for a long term of years in succession. We are never told of any such Vines being subject to the debilitating ordeal of ripening, for twenty years in succession, their Grapes in April or May, nor of their percentage of mortality, simply because they are not, that I am aware of, subject to the hard uphill work of thousands of Vines grown on the single-rod system, and because there are very few such Vines from which to form a table of mortality. But if a house of Vines grown on the single-rod system happens to break down, forthwith the advocates of the extension theory trumpet it from Land's End to John o' Groats. There are plenty of single rods, and very hard-worked ones too; and is it a matter for wonder to be able to construct tables of mortality from their ranks % Be it borne in mind, I am not desirous of disparaging the monster Vine plan under certain conditions.