TRANSACTIONS. 63 



over the principal apartments; and he "will wonder how 

 under such circumstances the houses can have escaped 

 destruction by fire for a century, as the date affixed to the 

 pious inscriptions upon the front, commemorating the erec- 

 tion of the dwelling, testifies that many of them have done. 

 The particular point in Swiss agriculture most deserving 

 notice is, perhaps, the practice of applying liquid manures 

 as a top-dressing for grass immediately after the hay is 

 removed ; not twenty-four hours being usually sufiFered to 

 elapse before the application. In fact the crop of hay is, 

 in most parts of Switzerland and the Tyrol, second in im- 

 portance to no other agricultural product, because, from 

 the mountainous nature of the country, rural husbandry is 

 mainly pastoral, and the length and severity of the cold 

 season requires an ample supply of winter food for cattle. 

 Butter and cheese are the most conspicuous articles in the 

 returns of the mountain districts, and so characteristic are 

 they of Swiss rural industry that Schtoeizerei has become 

 a common G erman word for dairy. 



But I am dwelling too long on these descriptive sketches, 

 and must omit any account of the physical features of the 

 more northern German States, confining myself to the 

 single observation that their agriculture is substantially 

 the same as that of the Germanic provinces already de- 

 scribed, modified of course more or less by local differences 

 of soil, established habit, and of climate as affected by 

 latitude, elevation and other causes. I must add, however, 

 that in all the countries north of the Alps, sheep-breeding, 

 which is of comparatively little importance in the Italian 

 peninsula, occupies a very conspicuous place in the labors 

 and returns of rural industry; and I cannot forbear to no- 

 tice the immense commercial and industrial importance 

 which the fondness of the Germans for beer gives to the 

 crops of barley and hops. Beer and ale in their dif- 

 ferent forms have been from remote ages the favorite na- 

 tional beverage of the Teutonic and Scandinavian races, 



