The rich prairie lands of Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota are not favorable to hops, although the climate is propitious. These soils lack something that is essential to the full development of the lupulin. The sections where both soil and climate favor the cultivation of hops are the central and northern counties of New York; here we have a cool climate and a rich soil, full of all the elements that go to make fine hops; Washington and Oregon, with a cool climate, and a soil so deep and rich and virginal that the yield of hops is exceptionally good, both in quantity and quality; and, lastly, California, where the hops are raised mostly in the valleys of the Sacramento and Russian rivers. Forty years ago Wisconsin raised a crop of about 10,000 bales of hops, but the hop-louse suddenly cut off the crop, and now not more than 2,000 bales are raised annually in that State. A few hops are raised each year in the New England States, where the soil is generally too poor to make the yield profitable, and a few in Michigan. A hop-yard is planted by means of cuttings or “sets,” taken from the roots of old vines, and set in the ground about seven feet apart each way, so that there are about 750 hills of hops to an acre. In New York State the vines from these “sets” produce nothing in the first year of growth, being allowed to spread on the ground; about half a crop in the second year, and a full crop in the third year. In California, Oregon and Washington the “sets” are furnished with poles the first year, and produce that year about half a crop, and a full crop the second year. In New York a fair average crop is about one pound of cured hops to the hill, or 750 pounds to the acre; while on the Pacific coast two or three, and, not infrequently, four times that weight is harvested. The hop-yards are generally equipped with poles about fifteen feet high, upon which the vines grow spirally upward; sometimes, however, the hop-vines are trained upon wires, stretched horizontally between stout posts over the rows of hills, with smaller wires or strings leading up to the horizontal wires from each hill. Some hop-yards are furnished with a single pole to a hill, the poles being from twelve to eighteen feet high, with strings running obliquely upward from the middle of one pole to the top of its neighbor. The prettiest hop-yard—that is the one most beautiful at the time of harvest—is the “tent-yard,” where a straight pole, twenty feet high, is set in the center of six or seven hills, into which stakes about five feet high, are placed, and provided with strings leading to the top of the tall central pole, thus forming a regular tent. These tent-yards closely resemble a military camp, a fact which gave rise to the designation, “Camps of King Gambrinus.”