TRA>;SACTIONS. 53 



and others, varying from the size of a large walnut to that 

 of a child's head, is very great, and I have seen more than 

 forty species, or well marked varieties in a single garden. 



But to return to Southern France. Here abounds the ilex, 

 and the oak whose outer bark forms the cork of commerce, 

 both evergreens, and the latter a source of great profit to 

 the proprietor ; and as you proceed eastward, across the 

 mountain spurs, arc thin forests of pines and of chcstuuts, 

 whose fruit forms an important article of diet for the pov- 

 erty-stricken peasants, while the rocky hills are covered 

 with the arbutus, or strawberry tree, a shrub whose fruit 

 much resembles the ground strawberry of our own meadow 

 in form and color, and is largely employed for distillation. 



From Nice, which lies near the boundary between the 

 Sardinian States and the French Empire, the road through 

 the duchy of Genoa skirts the sea, now runuing along the 

 water's edge, now climbing, by tortuous windings the ridges 

 of the maritime Alps, sometimes making a wide detour to 

 pass around a deep ravine, and sometimes plunging into 

 the bed of a bridgeless torrent, which, though dry in sum. 

 mer, is often swelled to a sea by the autumnal rains or the 

 melting of the Alpine snows. On the high grounds, if not too 

 rocky, grow the hardier trees already mentioned ; while low- 

 er down, the practicable slopes are terraced, the banks be- 

 ing supported by walls dry, or laid in mortar, whose height is 

 sometimes not less than the width of the shelf of soil above 

 them. The amount of labor and of money expended in con- 

 structing and maintaining these terraces is truly incredible, 

 and the general poverty of the people unhappily shows that 

 all this cost and toil have been but ill repaid. On the terraces, 

 which are often carried, in successive ranges, many hundred 

 feet up the side of the mountain, are planted the olive, the 

 mull)erry, the fig, and the vine, the latter, here no longer 

 reduced to a mere stump, but trained upon trees, whose 

 tops are lopped, and the lateral branches and twigs inter- 

 woven with the vine-shoots into the form of a basket, or 



