how far the fact held true in Germany; because if the circumstance arose from a difference of climate, it ought, by parity of reason, to be confirmed by vines in that coun try being found much farther north than in France. This happens precisely to be the case; for I find, by a late author, that vines in Germany are found no farther north than lat. 52.* The meeting with these in that latitude is a sufficient proof of the fact in question, since in France their limit is at 491⁄2. The line, therefore, which I have drawn as the boundary of vines in France, may be continued into Germany, and will probably be found to ascertain the vine climate in that country, as well as in France. The line of separation between maize and no maize is not less singular; it is first seen on the western side of the kingdom, in going from the Angoumois and entering Poitou, at Verac, near Ruffec. In crossing Loraine, I first met with it between Nancy and Luneville. It is deserving of attention, that if a line is drawn from between Nancy and / Luneville to Ruffec, that it will run nearly parallel with the other line that forms the separation of vines: but that line across the kingdom, is not formed by maize in so unbroken a manner, as the other by vines; for in the central journey, we found it no farther north than Douzenach, in the S. of the Limosin; a variation, however, that does not affect the general fact. In crossing from Alsace to Auvergne, I was nearest to this line at Dijon, where is maize. In crossing the Bourbonnois to Paris, there is an evident reason why this plant should not be found, which is the poverty of the soil, and the unimproved husbandry of all that country, being universally under fallow, and rye, which yields only three or four times the seed. Maize demands richer land or better management. I saw a few pieces so far north as near La Fleche, but they were so miserably bad, as evidently to prove that the plant was foreign to that climate. In order to give the reader a clearer idea of this, I have annexed a map, explaining, at one coup d'œil, these zones or climates, which may be drawn from the productions of France. The line of olives is pretty nearly in the same direction. In travelling south from Lyons, we see them first at Montelimart; and in going from Beziers to the Pyrenees, I lost them at Carcassonne: now, the line on the map drawn from Montelimart to Carcassonne, appears at once to be nearly parallel with those of maize and vines. Hence we may apparently determine, with safety, that there is a considerable difference between the climate of France in the eastern and western parts: that the eastern side of the kingdom is two and a half degrees of latitude hotter than the western, or if not hotter, more favourable to vegetation. That these divisions are not accidental, but have been the result of a great number of experiments, we may conclude from these articles of culture in general gradually declining before you quite lose them. On quitting the Angoumois, and entering Poitou, we find maize dwindling to poor crops, before it ceases to be cultivated; and in going from Nancy to Luneville, I noticed it in gardens, and then but in small pieces in the fields, before it became a confirmed culture. I made the same remark with respect to vines. It is very difficult to account for this fact; it seems probable that the climate is better when remote from the sea, than near it, which is contrary to numerous other facts; and I have remarked, that vines thrive even in the sea air, and almost fully exposed to it, at the mouth of the river Bayonne, and in Bretagne. A great many repeated observations must be made, and with more attention than is in the power of a traveller before such a subject, apparently very curious, can be thoroughly ascertained. In making such inquiries as these, a general culture is alone to be regarded: vines will grow in England; I have maize now on my own farm, and I have seen it at Paris; but this is not the question; for it turns solely on * De la Monarchie Prussienne, par M. le Compte de Mirabeau. tom. 11. p. 158. the climate being so well adapted to such articles as to enable the farmer to make them a common culture. Of the northern climate of France I may remark, that though vines will yield little profit in it for wine, yet there is a strong distinction, in respect of heat, between it and England, at the same time, that much of it is, I believe, to the full as humid as the S. and E. of England. The two circumstances to be attended to in this inquiry are, the quantity of fruit and the verdure and richness of pastures. In regard to heat, we must attend neither to the thermometer nor to the latitude, but to the vegetable productions. I travelled in the fruit season through Artois, Picardy, Normandy, Bretagne, Anjou, and Maine, and I found at every town, I might properly say at every village, such a plenty of fruit, particularly plums, peaches, late cherries, grapes, and melons, as never can be seen in England in the very hottest summers. The markets of all the towns, even in that poor and unimproved province of Bretagne, are supplied with these in a profusion of which we have no idea. It was with pleasure I walked through the market at Rennes. If a man were to see no other in France, lighting there from an English balloon, he would in a moment pronounce the climate to be totally different from that of Cornwall, our most southerly county, where myrtles will stand the winter abroad; and from that of Kerry, where the arbutus is so ac-climated, that it seems indigenous, though probably brought from Spain by the original inhabitants of the country. Yet in this province of Bretagne I saw no maize nor mulberries, and, except in the corner I have mentioned, it has no vineyards. Paris is not supplied with melons from provinces to the S. but from Harfleur, at the mouth of the Seine. For the humidity of the climate, I may quote the beautiful verdure of the rich pastures in Normandy, which are never irrigated. And I was a witness to three weeks of such rain at Liancourt, four miles only from Clermont, as I have not known, by many degrees, in England. To the great rains in the N. of France, which render it disagreeable, may be added the heavy snows and the severe frosts, which are experienced there to a greater degree than in the S. of England. I am assured that the N. of Europe has not known a long and sharp frost, which has not been much severer at Paris than at London. The central division that admits vines without being hot enough for maize, I consider as one of the finest climates in the world. Here are contained the province of Touraine, which, above all others, is most admired by the French; the picturesque province of Limosin; and the mild, healthy, and pleasant plains of the Bourbonnois; perhaps the most eligible countries of all France, of all Europe, as far as soil and climate are concerned. Here you are exempt from the extreme humidity which gives verdure to Normandy and England; and yet equally free from the burning heats which turn verdure itself into a russet brown in the S.; no ardent rays that oppress you with their fervour in summer; nor pinching tedious frosts that chill with their severity in winter; a light, pure, elastic air, admirable for every constitution except consumptive ones. But at the same time that I must commend these central provinces of France, for every circumstance of atmosphere that can render a country agreeable to inhabit, I must guard the reader against the idea of their being free from great inconveniences; they are certainly subject to those in relation to agriculture, which are heavily felt by the farmer. They are subject, in common with the olive district, to violent storms of rain, and what is worse, of hail. Two years ago, a storm of hail swept a tract of desolation in a belt across the whole kingdom, to the damage of several millions of our money. Such extended ruin is not common, for, if it were, the finest kingdoms would be laid waste; but no year ever passes without whole parishes suffering to a degree of which we have no conception, and on the whole to the amount of no inconsiderable proportion of the whole produce of the kingdom. It appears, from my friend Dr. Symond's paper on the climate of Italy, that the mischief of hail is dreadful in that country. I have heard it calculated in the S. of France, that the damage in some provinces amounted to one-tenth of the whole produce of them upon an average. A few days before my arrival at Barbesieux, there had fallen, at the duke de la Rouchefoucald's seat in the Angoumois, and some neighbouring parishes, a shower of hail that did not leave a single grape on the vines, and cut them so severely, as to preclude all hope of a crop the year following, and allowed no well-founded expectation of any beneficial produce even the third year. In another place, the geese were all killed by the same storm; and young colts were so wounded that they died afterwards. It is even asserted, that men have been known to be killed by hail, when unable to obtain any shelter. This storm destroyed a copse of the duke's, that was of two years growth. With such effects, it must be obvious to every one, that all sorts of corn and pulse must be utterly destroyed. At Pompinian, between Montauban and Toulouse, I was witness to such a shower of rain as never fell in Britain; in that rich vale, the corn, before the storm, made a noble appearance; but imagination can hardly picture a more entire destruction than it poured over the whole; the finest wheat was not only beaten flat to the ground, but streams of liquid mud covered it in many places, in a manner that made all expectation of recovery hopeless. These hasty and violent showers, which are of little consequence to a traveller, or to the residence of a gentleman, are dreadful scourges to the farmer, and immense drawbacks from the mass of national products. A circumstance of less consequence, but not undeserving attention, is the frosts which happen in the spring. We know in England how injurious these are to all the fruits of the earth, and how much they are supposed to damage even its most important product. Towards the end of May 1787, I found all the walnut trees with leaves turned quite black by them, S. of the Loire; and farther to the S. at Brive, we no sooner saw fig-trees, for the first time scattered about the vineyards, than we remarked them bound about with straw to defend them from the frosts of June. Still more to the S. about Cahors, the walnut trees were black on the 10th of June by frosts, within a fortnight; and we were informed of rye being in some years thus killed; and that rarely there is any spring month secure from these unseasonable attacks. In the N. E.. quarter I found, in 1789, the frost of the preceding winter had made a sad havock amongst the walnut trees, most of which were killed in Alsace, and the dead trees made a strange figure in summer; they were left in expectation of their shooting again, and some few did. From Autun in Burgundy, to Bourbon Lancey, the broom was all killed. Spring frosts were also complained of as much as on the other side of the kingdom. About Dijon, they said that they have them often late, and they damage or destroy every thing. And all the countries within reach of the mountains of Voge are affected by the snow that falls upon them, which was in 1789, on the 29th of June. This renders the vineyard an uncertain culture. Perhaps it may arise from the late frosts in the spring, that we meet with so few mulberries in France N. of the olive district. The profit of that tree is very great, as I shall explain fully in another place; yet the districts, where they are found in France, are very inconsiderable, when compared with the extent of the whole kingdom. It has been conceived in England, that the mildew is owing to late frosts; when I found myself in a region where rye was sometimes thus killed in June, and where every walnut hung with black, I naturally in * Annals of Agriculture, vol. iii. p. 137. quired for that distemper, and found in some places, near Cahors for instance, that their wheat was perfectly exempt from that malady in many springs, when other plants suffered the most severely; and we met even with farmers whose lands were so little subject to the distemper that they hardly knew it. This should seem to set aside the theory of frosts being the cause of that malady. As spring frosts are as mischievous in France as they can be with us, so also are they troubled with autumnal ones earlier than is common with us. On the 20th of September 1787, in going on the S. of the Loire, from Chambord to Orleans, we had so smart a one, that the vines were hurt by it; and there had been, for several days, so cold a N. E. wind, yet with a bright sun, that none of us stirred abroad without great coats. The olive-climate contains but a very inconsiderable portion of the kingdom, and of I that portion, not in one acre out of fifty is this tree cultivated. Several other plants, beside the olive, mark this climate. Thus at Montelimart, in Dauphine, besides that tree, you meet with, for the first time, the pomegranate, the arbor judæ, the paliurus, figs, and the evergreen oak; and with these plants, I may add also that detestable animal the mosquito. In crossing the mountains of Auvergne, Velay, and Vivarais, I met, between Pradelles and Thuytz, mulberries and flies at the same time; by the term flies, I mean those myriads of them, which form the most disagreeable circumstance of the southern climates. They are the first of torments in Spain, Italy, and the olivedistrict of France: it is not that they bite, sting, hurt, but they buz, teaze, and worry: your mouth, eyes, ears, and nose, are full of them: they swarm on every eatable, fruit, sugar, milk, every thing is attacked by them in such myriads, that if they are not driven away incessantly by a person who has nothing else to do, to eat a meal is impossible. They are, however caught on prepared paper, and other contrivances, with so much ease, and in such quantities, that were it not from negligence they could not abound in such incredible quantities. If I farmed in those countries, I think I should manure four or five acres every year with dead flies. Two other articles of culture in this climate, which deserve to be mentioned, though too inconsiderable to be a national object, are capers in Provence, and oranges at Hieres. The latter plant is so tender, that this is supposed to be the only part of France in which it will thrive in the open air. The whole of Roussillon is to the south of this, yet none are to be found there. I went to Hieres to view them, and it was with pain I found them almost, without exception, so damaged by the frost, in the winter of 1788, as to be cut down, some to the ground, and others to the main stem. Vast numbers of olives were in the same situation throughout the whole olive-district, and abundance of them absolutely killed. Thus we find, that in the most southerly part of France, and even in the most sheltered and secure situations, such severe frosts are known as to destroy the articles of common cultivation. In the description I took of the climate of Provence, from Mons. le President, Baron de la Tour d'Aigues, he informed me, that hail, in some years, does not break glass; but it was mentioned as an extraordinary thing. The only seasons in which is to be expected rain with any degree of certainty, are the equinoxes, when it comes violently for a time. No dependence for a single drop in June, July, or August, and the quantity always very small; which three months, and not the winter ones, are the pinching season for all great cattle. Sometimes not a drop falls for six months together.* They have white frosts in March, and sometimes in April. The great heats * A writer, who has been criticised for this assertion, was therefore right: "Telle est la position des provinces du midi on l'on reste souvent, six mois entiers, sans voir tomber une seule goutte d'eau." Corps Complet d'Agri. tom. viii. p. 56. are never till the 15th of July, nor after the 15th of September. Harvest begins June 24th, and ends July 15th; and Michaelmas is the middle of the vintage. In many years no snow is to be seen, and the frosts not severe. The spring is the worst season in the year, because the vent de bize, the mæstrale of the Italians, is terrible, and sufficient, in the mountains, to blow a man off his horse; it is also dangerous to the health from the sun, at the same time, being both high and powerful. But in December, January, and February, the weather is truly charming, with the bize very rarely, but not always free from it; for on the 3d of January 1786, there was so furious a mœstrale, with snow, that flocks were driven four or five leagues from their pastures; numbers of travellers, shepherds, sheep and asses in the Crau perished. Five shepherds were conducting eight hundred sheep to the butcheries at Marseilles, three of whom, and almost all the sheep, perished.* To make a residence in these provinces agreeable, a man should also avoid the great summer heats. For during the last week in July, and some days in August, I experienced such a heat at Carcassonne, Mirepoix, Pamiers, &c. as rendered the least exertion, in the middle of the day, oppressive; it exceeded any thing I felt in Spain. It was impossible to support a room that was light. No comfort but in darkness; and even there rest was impossible from myriads of flies.† It is true, such heats are not of long duration; if they were so, nobody, able to quit the country, would reside in it. These climates are disagreeable in spring and summer, and delicious in winter only. In the Bourbonnois, Limosin, and Touraine, there is no vent de bize. On the mountains above Tour d'Aigues, are chiefly found lavendulathymus-cistus rosea-cistus albidus-soralia bitumina-buxus semper virens-quercus ilex-pinus montana-rosmarinus officinalis rhamnus cathartica-genistis montis yentosa-genista Hispanica-juniperus Phœnicia-satureja montana-bromus sylvatica, &c. In the stubbles of all the olive-district, and in every waste spot are found centaurea calycitropa-centaurea solstitialis also the eryngium campestrum, and the eryn. gium amethystinum: they have sown in Provence the datura strimonium, which is now habituated to the country. In the mountains, from Cavalero to Frejus, and also in that of Estrelles, the lentiscus-myrtus-arbutus-lavendula cistus and laurustinus. Upon a general view of the climate of France, and upon comparing it with that of countries, not so much favoured apparently by nature, I may remark, that the principal superiority of it arises from adapting so large a portion of the kingdom to the culture of the vine; yet this noble plant is most unaccountably decried by abundance of writers, and especially by French ones, though the farmer is enabled to draw as extensive a profit from poor and otherwise barren, and even almost perpendicular rocks, as from the richest vales. Hence immense tracts of land may be ranked in France among the most valuable, which in our climate would be absolutely waste, or at least applied to no better use than warrens or sheep walks. This is the great superiority which climate gives to that kingdom over England: of its nature and extent, I shall treat fully under another head. The object of the next importance is peculiar to the olive and maize districts, and consists in the power of having, from the nature of the climate, two crops a-year on * Traite de l'Olivier, par M. Couture, ii. tom. octavo, Aix, 1786, tom. i. p. 79. † I have been much surprised, that the late learned Mr. Harmer should think it odd to find, by writers who treated of southern climates, that driving away flies, was an object of importance. Had he been with me in Spain and in Languedoc, in July and August, he would have been very far from thinking there was any thing odd in it. Observ. on divers Passages of Scripture, vol. iv. p. 159. |