18 
the house may be on the east, west or south side, preferably, the last 
uamed, where the strongest heat will make the sweetest fruit. The 
•oil is, in such a case, necessarily a fixed condition. Where choice 
is possible, grape-vines should not be planted in wet or clayey soils, 
nor in shady places. 
The commercial grower must select a site for a viueyard with 
much discrimination. If he will study the location of the wild grape 
of his vicinity he will get some good suggestions to guide him in his 
undertaking. The hillside exposures along streams are commonly 
the habitat of our wild grapes. The varieties grown in Pennsyl- 
vania are descendants of our native V/tls Labrusca or Northern Fox- 
grape. A warm southern or southeastern exposure is best suited 
to the grape. Level land is good where the soil and climatic condi- 
tions are most favorable. In the Chautauqua grape belt the vine- 
yards are mainly on level land, but it must be remembered that the 
nature of the soil is ideal for the vine, and the influence of so great a 
body of water as Lake Erie upon the climate along its shores can- 
not be duplicated elsewhere in this State. On the slopes and hill- 
sides bordering our large streams, choice positions for vineyards 
may be found. 
SOILS. 
The extensive vineyards in Erie county are planted upon three 
kinds of soils: First, a fine clay soil, which lies close to Lake Erie; 
second, a gravel of rounded pebbles, forming ridges or terraces one 
or two miles from the lake shore, and third, a boulder clay, being a 
fine clay, with many granite boulders. The clay is sometimes 
loamy and sometimes a veritable hardpan. 
This region is well described by R. S. Tarr, Professor of Geology 
in Cornell University as follows:* 
"If we should make several north and south sections across the 
grape belt from the middle of the escarpment to the lake shore, 
they would be found to vary in details according to the location of 
the line, but to be quite the same in general features. The average 
condition would be as follows. See Fig. 6. 'Commencing on the hill- 
side with a thin soil of clayey nature, and with an abundance of peb- 
bles, and perhaps boulders, at the base of the hill, when at the eleva- 
tion of about 250 feet above the lake, we come to a gravelly soil in 
which the pebbles are well rounded as if by water action. North of 
this there is a steep slope of twenty or thirty feet, at the base of 
which the soil becomes clayey; and this continues, usually for several 
hundred yards, when gravelly conditions are again encountered, 
somewhere in the vicinity of the main Buffalo and Erie turnpike. One 
•Bui. 109, r-ornpll Kxp. Station, Ithaca, N. T. 
