58 N. H. STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



of Romagna and Lombardy, which arc -watered by the Po 

 and the Brenta, with other rivers and their tributaries, 

 and extend hundreds of miles in both directions. Neither 

 the soil nor the climate of this region is so well adapted 

 to the grape as those of 'central and southern Italy, but 

 the Tine still flourishes on the flanks of the mountains that 

 border the great plain, and the few detached elevations 

 that break the general uniformity of its surface. The 

 orange disappears altogether. The mulberry becomes 

 more and more important. The pasture grounds and the 

 meadows are of unsurpassed productiveness. Indian corn 

 is very largely grown, and preserved through the winter 

 by being tressed up on the ear, as seed corn is with iis, 

 and hung out in the open air under the projecting roofs of 

 the dwellings and out-houses. Mush or hasty pudding, 

 under the name of polenta, here plays a very conspicuous 

 part in the nutrition of the laboring population. Rice, too 

 is produced in abundance wherever the soil can be flooded 

 at pleasure, and this grain thrives even as high as 45*^, 

 but its cultivation is so prejudicial to the health of the 

 country, that government has found it necessary to forbid 

 its extension. The beds of many of the principal streams 

 are considerably elevated above the plains through which 

 they flow, and thus furnish a convenient supply of water 

 for irrigation, for navigable canals, and for mechanical pur- 

 poses. The complicated net work of canals, by which the 

 ground is drained in wet seasons and the crops irrigated 

 in the dry, is believed to date earlier than the Roman con- 

 quest, and practicable hydraulics, or the art of directing 

 and controlling the flow of running water is nowhere bet- 

 ter understood than by the engineers of Lombardy. The 

 plains of Lombardy and Romagna appear to have been 

 formed almost wholly by the deposits of the Po and other 

 rivers whose aflluents rise in the Alps and the Apennines, 

 and they are now in a course of very rapid extension from 

 the operation of the same cause. The encroachments of 



