The causes of the uncertainty of cuttings are our inability to foresee the outcome of the season’s climatic conditions. More or less rain has a direct influence on our success. Thus in very rainy seasons the cuttings should be small or rather short, so as to be as much as possible in the upper, dryer and warmer soil. In dry seasons, again, the cuttings should be long, so as to be in the moist ground, but as we can never foresee what the season will be, we had better have a recourse to rooted vines, which, if in good condition, will be comparatively independent of weather and wind. _The Making of Cuttings._--The making of cuttings is not a difficult process, but nevertheless it should be carefully done in order to insure final success. After the vines have been trimmed and the trimmings have been placed in small piles along the rows of the vineyard, the cuttings should be made as quickly as possible on the spot, the laborers moving from pile to pile as they finish up. The shears should be sharp and kept sharp, both to insure good cuttings and to hasten the work. A poor shear is worse than a poor farmhand, and it pays to keep the best kind of every tool that is used in vineyard work. The size of the cutting must be decided upon according to the conditions of the soil. If the land is very wet and is likely to remain so, an eight-inch, or even a six-inch, cutting, will do, and will grow better than a long one. Long cuttings will reach down into the wet soil and decay at the lower end before they take root. In dry and warm soils the cuttings may be from twelve to eighteen inches long, or even longer if it is desirable to bend them in a circular way in the holes in which they are to be planted, or if the soil is very warm and dry, when it is of importance that the cutting should reach the deeper moisture. A twelve or fourteen inch cutting is probably an average size cutting, and one that will answer most conditions, in case they are not previously known.