500 Report or THE HORTICULTURAL DEPARTMENT OF THE 
to New York. Two years later John Jacques, a Frenchman, 
secured vines of Isabella and Catawba from Prince of Long 
Island, and planted a vineyard at Washingtonville, Orange 
County, some vines of which still live and are probably the 
oldest vines in New York. In Ulster County near Clintonville, 
William T. Cornell set a vineyard to Isabella in 1845. The 
Census Report for 1890 places the vineyards of this District 
at 13,000 acres; the reports ten years later showed a decrease 
of nearly one-half; an estimate in 1906-7 by this Station, 
places the present acreage by counties as follows: Columbia, 
865; Dutchess, 488; Orange, 865; Ulster, 4,021; making a total 
of 6,199. This decrease is largely due to the discarding of a 
number of old vineyards, planted with worthless varieties, or 
too many of them, and the giving up of plantations poorly set 
or located. Indications now point to a prosperous condition 
(for the district. Of the varieties grown in this region Con- 
cord leads followed by Delaware, Niagara, Worden, Moore 
Early, Bacchus, Pocklington, Campbell Early, Hartford, Ver- 
gennes and a large number of minor varieties. 
The Hudson River district may well be called the birthplace 
of American viticulture; here is to be found the oldest winery, 
the oldest vineyard, the first distributing point, the greatest 
number of varieties; and lastly there has been centered in this 
region a corps of viticulturists, whose memories will long be 
perpetuated by horticulturists. 
The soils of this district are clay or gravelly loams with 
more or less coarse fragments of slate or shale. They have 
been formed from limestones, schists, shales and slates, of the 
geologic formation known as the Taconic Province. This 
province is a broad valley taking in Orange, parts of Ulster, 
Dutchess and Columbia counties in New York and extending 
westward across northern New Jersey into Pennsylvania. The 
land is more or less hilly and rolling, with some broad undu- 
lating plains. | 
In the southern Hudson Valley where grapes are grown, 
there is a wide range of temperature, and a comparatively 
