the whole year, and only sought for when wanted for the butcher. Their flesh is excellent, and being very abundant in the markets of most parts of Italy, is not dear. Acorns are collected in some places, and sold to the farmers of the plains for feeding swine. The cones of the Pinus pinea (fig. 40.) are collected, and the seeds taken out: these are much esteemed, and bear a high price. The same thing is, in some places, done with the cones of the wild pine, commonly but erroneously called the Scotch fir (Pinus sylvestris, L.), whose seeds are equally good, though smaller. Strawberries, bramble berries, gooseberries, currants, raspberries, and other wild fruits, are collected and either sold publicly in the markets of the plains, or privately to the confectioners for flavoring ices; an article

in great demand throughout all Italy. Sismondi seems to have been the first who noticed that the black mulberry was grown in the mountains for its leaves, being considered as hardier than the white. The fruit was only eaten by children. In the plains and gardens of Italy the mulberry is scarcely known as a fruit tree, though the white species is every where grown for the silkworm.

296. The mountain farmers are generally proprietors of their farms. They live together in villages, which are very numerous; many of them hire themselves to the farmers of the maremmes when there is a scarcity of population, to assist in their harvests; and with the money saved in this way, and by sending fruits, collected by their wives and children, to the towns in the plains, they are generally better off than the farmers of the hills, or of the low country.

297. The agricultural establishment of Rossore may be mentioned as belonging to Tuscany. It is situated at the gate of Pisa, and was founded by the family of Medici, in the time of the crusades, and now belongs to government. A league square of ground, which was so poor and sandy as to be unfit for culture, was surrounded by a fence, and having been left to itself, has now the appearance of a neglected park. A building was erected in its centre as a lodge, and interspersed in the grounds were built stables and sheep houses. The park was stocked with an Arabian stallion and a few mares, and some Asiatic camels; and these were left to breed and live in a state of nature. About the beginning of the present century a flock of Merino sheep was added. The horses have formed themselves into distinct tribes or troops, each of fifteen or twenty mares governed by a stallion. These tribes never mix together, each has its quarter of pasture which they divide among themselves without the interference of shepherds. The shape of these horses is wretched, and the spare or superfluous ones are sold only to fuel drivers (coalmen, Carbonari,) and the post. There are more than two hundred camels which associate together, and multiply at pleasure. They are worked in the plough and cart, and the spare stock supplies all the mountebanks of Europe, who buy them at the low price of six or seven louis each. The next feature of this establishment is a herd of 1800 wild bulls and cows, fierce and dangerous: the superfluous stock of these is either hunted and killed for their hides and flesh, or sold alive to the farmers to be fed or worked. The flock of Merinos are but lately introduced. Such are the chief features of this establishment; which Chateauvieux terms a specimen of Tatar culture: it is evident it has no other art or merit than that of allowing the powers and instincts of nature to operate in their own way: it forms a very singular contrast to the highly artificial state of rural economy in Tuscany.

SUBSECT. S. Of the Agriculture of the Maremmes, or the District of Pestilential Air. 298. The extent of this district is from Leghorn to Terracina in length; and its widest part is in the states of the church; it includes Rome, and extends to the base of the Appennines.

299. The climate of the maremmes is so mild that vegetation goes on during the whole of the winter; but so pestilential that there are scarcely any fixed inhabitants in this immense tract of country, with the exception of those of the towns or cities on its borders.

300. The surface is flat or gently varied; and the soil in most places deep and rich. In the maremmes of Tuscany it is in some places a blue clay abounding in sulphur and alurn, and produces almost nothing but coltsfoot (tussilago).

301. The estates are generally extensive, and let in large farms at fixed rents, to men of capital. The maremmes of Rome, forty leagues in extent, are divided only into a few hundred estates, and let to not more than eighty farmers. cera, and pasture oxen of their own; and in winter they graze the the mountains of Tuscany and other states at so much a head.

These farmers grow wandering flocks of The corn grown is

chiefly wheat, which is reaped by peasants from the mountains, some of whom also stay and assist in sowing the succeeding crop; whence, the whole disappear; and the maremmes remain a desert with a few men, whom Chateauvieux designates as "half savages, who run over these solitudes like Tatars, armed with long lances, and covered with coarse woollens and untanned skins." The lance they use in hunting down the oxen when any are to be caught for the butcher, or to break-in for labor; and the clothing alluded to has been recommended by the medical men of Rome, as the most likely to resist the attacks of the malaria (bad air), or pestilence.

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302. The agricultural implements and operations differ little from those of other parts of Italy. The plough, or araire, of Rome (fig. 41.), is a rude implement, with a broad flat share, on the hinder end of which the ploughman stands; and thus drawn along, his weight makes a deeper furrow. Two strips of wood (the bine auris of Virgil), about eighteen inches long, are often attached to the share, diverging a little from each other, and these serve to lay open the furrow like our mould-board. In the operation of propagating the vine, cuttings are planted in

trenches four feet deep, into which stones have been previously thrown, for the alleged purpose of encouraging moisture about the roots. The same mode was practised in Virgil's time. (Georg.

ii. 346.) The common Roman cart (fig. 42.), is supposed to have been originally designed by the celebrated Michael Angelo, in his quality of engineer and wheeler. - Buonarotti. (See Lasteyrie, Col. des Mah. &c.)

303. The farm of

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Campo Morto (field of death) includes the whole property of St. Peter's church in Rome, which is supported from its sole revenue. This vast estate is situated in the Pontine marshes, and the following outline of its management is taken from a letter of Chateauvieux, written in July 1813:

304. The farmery, the only building on an estate of many thousand acres, consists of a central building and two wings, the ground-floor of the central part consists of an immense kitchen and five large rooms, the latter without windows, and unfurnished. The first story consists of six rooms, used as cornchambers, with the exception of one, which was furnished, and served to lodge the principal officers. The two wings contained large vaulted stables, with hay-lofts over. One female lived in the house, in order to cook for the officers or upper servants, whose wives and families live in the towns as do those of the shepherds. There was no garden, or any appearance of neatness or cleanliness, and not a fence or a hedge, and scarcely a tree on the whole farm.

305. The fattore, or steward, was an educated man, and a citizen of Rome, where his family lived; he and all the other officers, and even shepherds, always went out mounted and armed.

306. The reapers were at work in a distant part of the estate, when Chateauvieux went over it: they were an immense band, ranged as in the order of battle, and guarded by twelve chiefs or overseers on horseback, with lances in their hands. These reapers had lately arrived from the mountains; half were men and but the women. "They were bathed in sweat; the sun was intolerable; the men were good figures, but the women were frightful. They had been some days from the mountains, and the foul air had begun to attack them. Two only had yet taken the fever; but they told me, from that time a great number would be seized every day, and that by the end of harvest the troop would be reduced at least one haif. What then, I said, becomes of these unhappy creatures? They give them a morsel of bread, and send them back. But whither do they go? They take the way to the mountains; some remain on the road, some die, but others arrive, suffering under misery and inanition, to come again the following year."

307. The corn is threshed fifteen days after being cut: the grain is trodden out under the feet of horses, cleaned, and carried to Rome. The straw was formerly suffered to be dispersed by the wind; but it is now collected in heaps (at regular distances over the country, and always on eminences: there it lies ready to be burned on the approach of "those clouds of grasshoppers which often devastate the whole of this country."

305. The live stock of the farm consisted of a hundred working oxen; several hundreds of wild cows and bulls kept for breeding, and for the sale of their calves and heifers; two thousand swine, which are fatted by nuts and acorns in the forests belonging to the estate; a hundred horses for the use of the herdsmen. There were four thousand sheep on the low grounds, and six hundred and eighty thousand on the mountains belonging to the estate. Of the latter, eighty thousand were of the Negretti breed, whose wool it was intended to have manufactured into the dresses of all the mendicant monks, in Italy, and into the greatcoats of the shepherds: the rest were of the Pouille breed, which produces a white wool, but only on the upper part of the body. As mutton is not good, and but little eaten in Italy, they kill most of the tuplambs as soon as they are born, and milk the ewes to make cheese. The temporary flocks had not arrived when Chateauvieux was at Campo Morto, the fields not being then cleared of their crops.

309. The farmer of this extensive domain is M. Trucci, who pays a rent for it of 22,000 piastres (4950l.). This, said M. Trucci to Chateauvieux, supposes an extent of three thousand rubbi, or six thousand acres, of culturable land. I have nearly as

much that is not fit for the plough, and it is there my pigs and my cows principally feed. My three thousand rubbi are divided into nearly nine equal parts of three hundred and thirty rubbi each one of these is in fallow, another in corn, and the seven others in pasture. On the two thousand three hundred rubbi, which remain in grass, I support four thousand sheep, four hundred horses, two hundred oxen, and I reserve a portion for hay. In the macchie (bushy places, woody wastes) I have seven hundred cows, and sometimes nearly two thousand pigs.

310. My expences "are limited to paying the rent of the farm, to purchasing bread for the workmen, and to the entire maintenance of my army of shepherds, superintendants, and the fattore; to paying for the work of the day-laborers, of the harvest-men, &c.; and, in short, to the expense of moving the flocks, and to what, in large farms, is called the extra charges, the amount of which is always very high. There must also be deducted from the gross profits of the flock about one-tenth, which belongs, in different proportions, to my chiefs and to my shepherds, because I support this tenth at my expense. We have also, in this mode of culture, to sustain great losses on our cattle, notwithstanding which I must acknowledge that our farming is profitable.

311. Of annual profit, "I average about five thousand piastres, besides five per cent. on the capital of my flocks. You see, then, that the lands in the Campagna of Rome, so despised, and in such a state of wildness, let at the rate of eighteen francs (fifteen shillings) the Paris acre: there is an immense quantity in France, which does not let for so much. They would, doubtlessly, let for more if they were divided and peopled, but not in the proportion supposed, for the secret in large farms consists in their economy; and nothing on the subject of agricultural profit is so deceptive as the appearance they present to our view, for the profit depends solely on the amount of the economical combinations, and not on the richness of the productions displayed to the eye." (Letters on Italy, &c.)

SUBSECT. 4. Farming in the Neapolitan Territory, or the Land of Ashes.

312. The farming on the volcanic soil, in the neighborhood of Vesuvius, belongs to the valley farming of Tuscany; but as it varies a little, and as the farmers are much more wretched, we shall give the following relation, as received by Chateauvieux, from a Neapolitan metayer: —

313. We, poor metayers, he said, "occupy only so much land as we can cultivate by our own families, that is to say, four or five acres. Our condition is not a good one, since we get for our trouble only a third of the produce, two-thirds belonging to the owner, which we pay in kind into the hands of the steward. We have no ploughs, and the whole is cultivated by the spade. It is true that the soil, being mixed with ashes, is easily stirred; and even our children assist us in this work. At times the mountain, hence named Vesuvius, pours forth showers of ashes, which spread over our fields and fertilize them.

314. The trees which you see on the land," are not without their use; they support the vine, and give us fruit; we also carefully gather their leaves: it is the last autumnal crop, and serves to feed our cattle in the winter. We cultivate, in succession, melons, between the rows of elms, which we carry to the city to sell; after which we sow wheat. When the wheat crop is taken off, we dig in the stubble, which is done by our families, to sow beans or purple clover. During six months, our children go every morning to cut a quantity of it with the sickle, to feed the cows. We prefer the females of the buffaloes, as they give most milk. We have also goats, and sometimes an ass, or a small horse, to go to the city and carry our burthens; but this advantage belongs only to the richer metayers.

315. We plant the maize "the following spring, after clover or beans. We manure the land at this time, because this plant is to support our families; this crop, therefore, interests us more than all the others, and the day in which it is harvested is a day of festivity in our country. All the villagers assemble together, the young women dance, and the rest of us walk slowly, being laden with our tools: arrived at our dwellings, each family goes into its own; but they are so near each other, that we can still converse together. 316. We often gather seven ears from one stalk of maize," and many of them are three palms long. When the sun is high, the father of the family goes into the adjoining field to get some melons, while the children gather fruit from the surrounding fig-trees. The fruit is brought under an elm-tree, round which the whole family sits; after this repast the work begins again, and does not cease until the close of day. Each family then visits its neighbors, and tells of the rich crop the season has bestowed upon them. 317. We have no sooner gotten in the maize than the earth is again dug, to be sown once more with wheat; after this second crop, we grow in the fields only vegetables of different kinds. Our lands thus produce wine and fruit, corn and vegetables, leaves and grass for the cattle. We have no reason to complain of their fertility; but our conditions are hard, little being left for our pains; and if the season is not propitious, the metayer has much to complain of." (Letters, &c.)

318. The cotton plant (Gossypium herbaceum) (fig. 43.) is beginning to be cultivated in the neighborhood of Vesuvius, and in Sicily. It is sown in March, in lines at three feet distance, and the plants two feet apart in the lines. The earth is stirred by a one-horse plough, or by hoes, and carefully weeded. As soon as the flowering season is over, about the middle of September, the ends of the shoots are nipped off, to determine the sap to the fruit. The capsules are collected as they ripen; a tedious process, lasting two months: the cotton and the seeds are then separated; an operation still more tedious. The most extensive cotton farmers are in the vale of Sorento. There the rotation is, 1. maize; 2. wheat, followed by beans, which ripen next March; 3. cotton; 4. wheat, followed by clover; 5. melons, followed by French or common beans. Thus, in five years, are produced eight crops. In this district, wherever water can be commanded, it is distributed, as in Tuscany and Lombardy, among every kind of crop.

319. The tomato, or love apple (Solanum lycopersicum, L),

so extensively used in Italian cookery, forms also an article of

field-culture near Pompeii, and especially in Sicily, from whence they are sent to Naples, Rome, and several towns on the Mediterranean sea. It is treated much in the same way as the cotton plant.

320. The orange, lemon, peach, fig, &c., with various other fruits, are grown in the Neapolitan territory, both for home use and exportation: but their culture we consider as belonging to gardening.

321. The Neapolitan maremmes, near Salerno, to the evils of those of Rome, add that of a wretched soil. They are pastured by a few herds of buffaloes and oxen; the herdsmen of which have no other shelter during the night than reed huts; these desert tracts being without either houses or ruins. The plough of this ancient Greek colony is thought to be the nearest to that of Greece, and has been already adverted to (24.)

322. The manna, a concrete juice, forms an article of cultivation in Calabria. This substance is nothing more than the exsiccated juice of the flowering ash-tree (Ornus rotundifolia), which grows there wild in abundance. In April or May, the peasants make one or two incisions in the trunk of the tree with a hatchet, a few inches deep; insert a reed, round which the sap trickles down, and after a month or two they return, and find this reed sheathed with manna. The use of manna, in medicine, is on the decline.

323. The filberts and chestnuts of the Calabrian Appennines are collected by the farmers, and sold in Naples for exportation or consumption.

324. The culture of indigo and sugar was attempted in the Neapolitan territory, under the reign of Murat. The indigo succeeded; and time had not elapsed to judge of the sugar culture when it was abandoned. The plants, however, grew vigorously, and their remains may still (1819) be seen in the fields near Terracina.

325. Oysters have been bred and reared in the kingdom of Naples from the time of the Romans. The subject is mentioned by Nonnius (De Reb. Cib. 1. iii. c. 37.); and by Pliny, (Nat. Hist. b. xviii. c. 54.) Count Lasteyrie (Machines, &c.) describes the place mentioned by the latter author, as it now exists in the lake Facino, at Baia. This lake (fig. 44.) communicates with the sea by a narrow passage: on the water near its mar

gin, a house (c) is constructed for those who take care of the oysters, and who sell them to the dealers in Naples, or to those who come and eat them on the spot. Adjoining the house is a covered enclosure (¿), where the oysters are kept till wanted; and along the margin of the lake, and in most parts of it, are placed circles of reeds, with their summits above the water (a). The spawn of the oysters attaches itself to these reeds, and grows there till of an edible size: they are then removed to the reserve (b), and kept there till wanted. In removing them the reeds are pulled up one by one, examined, and the full-grown oysters removed and put in baskets, while the small sized and spawn are suffered to remain, and the reed is replaced as it was. The baskets are then placed in the reserve, and not emptied till sold. In two years from the spawn, Lasteyrie observes, the oyster is fully grown.

SECT. II. Of the present State of Agriculture in Switzerland.

326. The agriculture of Switzerland, though of a very primitive kind, is not withcut interest from the nice attentions required in some parts of its operations. The surface, soil, and climate of the country, are so extraordinarily irregular and diversified, that in some places grapes ripen, and in many others corn will not arrive at maturity; on one side of a hill the inhabitants are often reaping, while they are sowing on the other; or they are obliged to feed the cattle on its summits with leaves of evergreens while they are making hay at its base. A season often happens in which rains during harvest prevent the corn from being dried, and it germinates, rots, and becomes useless; in others it is destroyed by frost. In some cases there is no corn to reap from the effect of summer storms. In no country is so much skill required in harvesting corn and hay as Switzerland; and no better school could be found for the study of that part of Scotch and Irish farming. After noticing some leading features of the culture of the cantons which form the republic, we shall cast our eye on the mountains of Savoy.

SUBSECT. 1. Of the Agriculture of the Swiss Cantons.

327. Agriculture began to attract public attention in Switzerland about the middle of the eighteenth century. In 1759 a society for the promotion of rural economy established itself at Berne: they offered premiums and have published some useful papers in several volumes. Long before that period, however, the Swiss farmers were considered the most exact in Europe. (Stanyan's Account of Switzerland in 1714.) Chateauvieux attributes the progress which agriculture has made, near Vevay, on the lake of Geneva, to the settlement of the protestants, who emigrated thither from France, at the end of the seventeenth century. They cut the hills into terraces, and planted vines, which has so much encreased the value of the land, that what was before worth little, now sells at 10,000 francs per acre. (Let. xxi.) Improvement in Switzerland is not likely to be rapid; because agriculture there is limited almost entirely to procuring the means of subsistence, and not to the employment of capital for profit.

328. Landed property in Switzerland is minutely divided, and almost always farmed by the proprietors and their families: or it is in immense tracts of mountain belonging to the bailiwicks, and pastured in common: every proprietor and burgess having a right according to the extent of his property. These peasants are, perhaps, the most frugal cultivators in Europe: they rear numerous families, a part of which are obliged to emigrate, because there are few manufactures; and land is excessively dear, and seldom in the market.

329. The vallies of the alpine regions of Switzerland are subject to very peculiar injuries from the rivers, mountain-rocks, and glaciers. As the rivers are subject to vast and sudden inundations, from the thawing of the snow on the mountains, they bring down at such times an immense quantity of stones, and spread them over the bottoms of the vallies. Many a stream, which appears in ordinary times inconsiderable, has a stoney bed of half a mile in breadth, in various parts of its course; thus a portion of the finest land is rendered useless. The cultivated slopes at the base of the mountains are subject to be buried under eboulements, when the rocks above fall down, and sometimes cover many square miles with their ruins.

33. Eboulement (Fr.), denotes a falling down of a mountain or mass of rock, and consequent covering the lower grounds with its fragments; when an immense quantity of stones are suddenly brought down from the mountains by the breaking or thawing of a glacier, it is also called an eboulement. (Bakewell, p. 11.) Vast eboulements are every year falling from the enormous precipices that overhang the Talley of the Rhone: many of these are recorded which have destroyed entire villages.

One of the most extraordinary eboulements ever known was that of Mont Grenier, five miles south of Chamberry. A part of this mountain fell down in the year 1248, and entirely buried five parishes, and the town and church of St. André. The ruins spread over an extent of about nine square miles, and are talled Les Abymes de Myans. After a lapse of so many centuries, they still present a singular scene of desolation. The catastrophe must have been most awful when seen from the vicinity; for Mont Greker is almost isolated, advancing into a broad plain, which extends to the valley of the Isere.

Mint Grenier rises very abruptly upwards of 4000 feet above the plain. Like the mountains of Les Echelles, with which it is connected, it is capped with an immense mass of limestone strata, not less than 600 feet in thickness, which presents on every side the appearance of a wall. The strata dip gently in the side which fell into the plain. This mass of limestone rests on a foundation of softer strata, pro