The French Revolution drove a wealthy and educated Frenchman, M. Parmentier, to New York at the beginning of the nineteenth century. He planted about his place in Brooklyn a large garden in which there were many grapes. This garden afterward became a commercial nursery from which was distributed a considerable number of European grapes. Mr. Robert Underhill at Croton Point on the Hudson was induced to plant a vineyard of these but they soon went the way of all their kind, leaving Mr. Underhill only a consuming desire to plant grapes. This desire bore fruit, as we shall see. When the reign of terror had ceased, Parmentier returned to France from whence he sent many grapes to friends in America. He left a lasting impress on the horticulture and viticulture of America, through his experimental efforts with plants and his contribution to American horticultural literature. The Underhills (the father had been joined by his sons R. T. and W. A. Underhill) planted a vineyard of Catawbas and Isabellas in 1827. These vineyards grew until they covered seventy-five acres, the product of which was marketed in the metropolis and nearby cities. The grapes from this vineyard often sold for twenty-five cents a pound and supplied the whole market of the region. The grape industry of the Hudson River Valley began with Parmentier and the Underhills. Another Frenchman, Alphonse Loubat, planted a vineyard of forty acres at Utrecht, Long Island, containing about 150,000 plants of foreign varieties. Here, we are told, "he strove against mildew and sun-scald for several years, but had to yield at last, as the elements were too much for human exertions to overcome."[37] Loubat attempted to protect his grapes from mildew by covering them with paper bags and was probably the originator of the practice of bagging grapes. Not infrequently one may still find some varieties of the Old World grape grown out of doors with a fair degree of success in favored locations but always by the amateur and never in a commercial vineyard. These few pages rehearsing repeated failures without a single success, serve to show the uselessness of attempting to grow foreign grapes in eastern America. Their culture has been tried by thousands on a small scale and by many individuals with experience, knowledge and capital on a large scale. With all, the results have been the same; a year or two of promise, then disease, dead vines and an abandoned vineyard. The causes for these failures have been indicated. As Dufour says, "a sickness takes hold of the vines." Phylloxera, mildew, rot--native parasites to which native grapes are comparatively immune--"take hold" of the foreign sorts and they die.