BOOK CXLI. Forest trees. Cerasus by his art, to preserve, in France, the lilly of Palestine, the sunflower of Peru, the dahlia of Mexico, the balsamine of India, the reseda of Egypt, the angelica of Lapland, the tuberose of Ceylon, the tulip of Turkey, and the inodorous ranunculus, the only monument of Saint Lewis' pious expedition into Syria. The weeping willow, now common on the banks of rivers, was obtained from the neighbourhood of Babylon. Near the most common forest trees in France, such as the oak, the birch, the elm, the mountain ash and the beech, may now be seen in the false acacia, which Robin brought from Virginia, different American oaks, and the horse chestnut tree, indigenous to Turkey in Asia. The Norwegian and Canadian firs now grow on the highest regions in the kingdom. To the aspen tree, to the black and white poplars, natives of the country, are added other varieties from Italy and America. But all the woods and plantations in France do not occupy a greater surface than 17,500,000 English acres. An extent too small to render available all the means necessary for the preservation of the forests. Local industry, climate, and a favourable exposure, add in several departments to the value of certain plants. Forests of resinous trees extend along the sea coast in the department of Landes; in the same country and in the department of Lot and Garonne, the quercus suber or cork oak is cultivated throughout an extent of thirty or forty leagues. The firs of the Vosges and Jura are used by the house carpenter; indeed in that part of France, few or no firs are imported from northern countries. The pine furnishes the peasant of Brittany with a substitute for oil and candles. The fruit of a particular cherry tree, cerasus sylvestris, that abounds in the Vosges, yields by distillation, a kirchenwasser, not inferior to any that can be had in the Black Forest, The mulberry tree, the olive and the orange are cultivated in the southern departments. The fruit of the plum tree forms a considerable branch of trade in the departments of Var, Lot and Garonne, Indre and Loire. The finest fruits in the country round Paris are the chasselas or raisins of Fontainbleau, the peach of Montreuil and the Montmorency cherry. BOOK CXLI. Vegetables Different vegetables have acquired, on certain soils, a superior quality; one or two instances may be mentioned, among others, the kidney beans in the neighbourhood of Soissons, the carrots of Amiens, and the artichokes in the country round Laons. The vineyards in France yield two hundred and fifty different sorts of wine, they extend Vines. over a surface of 5,000,000 acres, and their mean produce is supposed to be equal to 880,000,000 gallons. The best sorts are obtained from the ancient provinces of Champagne, Burgundy, Lyonnais, Dauphiny and Bordelais. To divide the soil of France into seven different kinds, Soil. after the example of Arthur Young, might lead to errors which have been too often repeated. As there is not a department in which the surface does not consist of lands, more or less rich, light, strong and sandy, how can twenty one departments be arbitrarily divided into rich or heavy soils, nineteen into heath land, eight into chalky soils, two into gravel land, fifteen into stony, as many into mountainous, and six into sandy soils. The study of geology tends to correct such mistakes; thus, what has been called vegetable land, is merely an alluvial stratum, formed while the surface of different lands, was covered with fresh water; the same stratum is fruitful in proportion to the quantity of decomposed plants or vegetables contained in it; if thin, it mixes with the rocks that support it, if imperceptible, sand, argil or calcareous substances, exposed to view, form a soil in which the perfection of agriculture consists in supplying the defects of nature. Lastly, the inequalities in the soil have a great influence on the fertility of different lands, because in low valleys the alluvial deposits are greater than in plains, and the latter for the same reason are more fruitful than hills or lofty ridges. It may not, however, be difficult to determine or characterise a great extent of surface, where the soil, naturally sterile, is fructified by the effects of industry, and a judicious system of agriculture. See in the statistical tables, the quantity of land reserved for particular sorts of culture. The above mentioned division is still adopted in the last edition of Guthrie's Geography. BOOK CXLI. Mountain The Vosges and the Pyrenees are in many places very unfruitful, although the Cevennes, in which the rocks are of the same kind, prove what may be done by the perseous regions. Vering labour and industry of man. In that part of the country, as well as in some parts of Auvergne, walls are raised at separate distances, in order to retain the alluvial deposits, which otherwise must have been carried by the waters to the lowest vallies. The southern portion of one department, the Gironde, and almost the whole of another, -the Landes, are covered with sands, which might become wholly unproductive, if the inhabitants did not avail themselves of a plant, best adapted to the nature of the soil,-the maritime pine, that yields a great quantity of resin, and thus enables them to carry on no inconsiderable trade. If the same sands are mixed with any calcareous substance, such as the fossil shell fish in the neighbourhood of Bordeaux, they form a oils favourable to the culture of the vine,; nay, they may be even rendered productive by force of manure, as for example, the plain of Boulogne near Paris. By the same means, the present sterile sands of Sologne in the department of Cher, and others in Brittany might be cultivated. The chalky plains of Champagne are fruitful wherever their surface is covered with an alluvial deposit of argil; but in the arid parts of the same province, differProducts of ent trees might be planted. The importance of encouraging agriculture in France, may be admitted from the fact, that the surface of unproductive or waste lands, cannot be estimated at less than 10,000.000 acres, in other words, at a twelfth part of the whole kingdom. If so great a surface were rendered productive, a considerable increase must necessarily follow in the number of inhabitants, since more than a sixth part would be added to the amount of arable land in France, which is considered equal to 57,000,000, acres. The average produce of the same land according to the most correct calculations, is equivalent to 51,000,000 hectolitres of wheat,* 30,300,000 of meslin, 6,300,000 of maize, 8,400,000 of rye, 32,000,000 of oats, and 20,000,000 of potatoes. It follows from the nature and position of the Chalky plains. the soil. *The hectolitre contains nearly three English bushels. soil in different parts of France, that eleven departments, the Lozere, the Creuse, Finistere; the Cotes du Nord, Manche, Calvados, Orne, the Lower Seine, the Somme, the Pas-de-Calais and the Nord, are wholly destitute of vineyards; forty produce lint, and hemp is extensively cultivated in fifty-seven. BOOK CXLI. vegetation. It is unnecessary to enumerate the plants that compose Natural the French Flora, it may be observed, however, that they are divided into more than 830 genera and 6000 species, a number greater than that in Germany, although the latter country is larger than France. The wild animals that frequent the mountains, woods Animals. and fields, are not so numerous as in Germany, because the forests are not so large, and the mountains, not so extensive. The black bear (Ursus Pyrenaicus) and the brown bear are found in the French part of the Pyrenees; the lynx, of which the piercing eyes are proverbial, frequents the High Alps, it is now, however, more rarely observed than formerly; the chamois and the wild goat never leave the summits that form the eastern and southern limits of the kingdom. The forests in the Vosges, and the woods on the Moselle, afford shelter to the squirrel (sciurus vulgaris); another variety of a dark brown colour with white stripes, the sciurus alpinus, and the Siberian flying squirrel, which issues from its retreat in the night, and by means of its dilated sides, springs from one branch to another, are not uncommon in many parts of the High Alps. The yellow marten (mustela alpina) is found in the same department; the marmot (arctomys marmotta), a social animal, frequents the cavities near the summits of the French Alps and Pyrenees. In the neighbouring departments of the Vosges, may be seen the enemy of the field mouse, the ermine (mustela herminea), of which the fur is imported from the frozen plains of Siberia, and the hamster or mus crissetus, famous for its migrations, found in the north and south of Russia, in Poland, the Ukraine, Hungary, Germany and Alsace, where it is called the marmot of Strasburg. The hamster lays waste the crops; each of them, it is said, amasses in its hole or den from twelve to a hundred pounds of grain; as intrepid as it is fierce, it BOOK CXLI. Whales. der stones, and frees the female of its eggs in order to carry them to some pool, is found in every department. The green toad, which, when struck, diffuses an odour resembling that of ambergris, and the thorny toad, a hideous animal, some of them of monstrous shapes, are confined to the mountainous districts. The turtle, which the ancients used in making their lyres, is sometimes taken on the coasts of the Mediterranean and the Ocean; the fresh water tortoise, not uncommon in the southern marshes, is frequently kept in gardens, because it destroys insects and noxious animals. The water eft is most common in the southern departments, the ordinary lizard frequents them all. Many individuals are employed in fishing on the extensive coasts of France, and the products of their labour are distributed in the remotest frontiers. The channel and the ocean supply the inhabitants with turbot, ray, soles, cod, salmon, whitings, mackarel, mullet and sardel. The last sort is so abundant that the sardel fisheries on the coast of Brittany, yield an annual profit of L.83,000. Other sorts are taken by the fishermen on the Mediterranean, the most valuable are the tunny and the anchovy. Cetaceous animals sometimes appear on the French coasts; a cachalot or trumpo was taken in the neighbourhood of Bayonne in 1741; thirty-one large cachalots belonging to a distinct species (physeter macrocephalus), were stranded by a tempest on the western coast of Audierne in Lower Brittany, in 1784. The whale, the giant of the northern seas, frequented the gulfs of Gascony and Lions in the time of Strabo and Pliny.* The Basques derived considerable profit from their whale fisheries about the beginning of the twelfth century; since that time the whale has fled for refuge from man into the frozen seas, and its appearance on the French coast is cited as a rare phenomenon. In 1620, a whale more than a hundred feet in length, fell on the island of Corsica; in 1720, another about seventy-two feet long was taken in the bay of the Somme; one was found upwards of sixty-two feet in length on the island of Oleron in 1826; lastly, the inhabitants of St. Cyprian near Per See Pliny's Natural History, Book IX. ch. 6. Strabo, Book III, ch. 2, 2. |