114 PRANCE - MISCELI,ANEOUS 



itating the operations, grouped the various types of farm under thirteen heads 

 that is to say : 



1st., Arable land, 



2nd., Meadows and natural grass, permanent grass and grazing grounds ; 



3rd., Orchards and farms for the cultivation of fruit trees and shrubs; 



4th. , \'^ineyards ; 



5th., Woods, alder plots, mllow plots, osier holts etc. ; 



6th. , Moors, commons, heaths, marshes, waste land etc. 



7th., Quarries, slate quarries, sandpits, peatmoss bogs, etc. ; 



8th., Lakes, pools, ponds, horse-ponds, springs etc., canals not for 

 navigation and areas in connection with them, brine pits and salt marshes; 



9th., Gardens other than pleasure gardens and land used for market gard- 

 ening, floriculture and ornamental gardening ; nursery gardens etc. 



loth.. Yards, depositing sites, building sites, private roads etc. 



nth., Pleasure grounds, parks, gardens, sheets of water etc ; 



12th., Railways, navigable canals and dependent areas ; 



13th., Ground built on and rural buildings, courtyards and dependent 

 areas etc. 



Only the holdings included under the first twelve heads were valued, 

 as article 2 of the law of December 26th., 1908 provided that no value should 

 be assigned for the sites of buildings etc., of which the 13th group is en- 

 tirely composed. 



1st., Area. — Among the various types of holdings there are 23,725,083 

 ha. of arable land alone, nearly half the entire area of the holdings or more 

 precisely 46.54% ; next in area come the woodlands, 9,716,915 ha. (19.06%); 

 then, in descending order, moorlands, with 7,205,648 ha. (14.13 %); mead- 

 ows, 6,912,508 ha. (13.56 %) and vineyards, 1,499,048 ha. (2.94 %). 



The respective areas of these five groups of types of farm, comprising 

 altogether 96.23 % of the total area of the holdings, are necessarily distributed 

 very differently in the various departments, according to their geological 

 formation, geographical situation, climate and economic regime. In this 

 connection we may make the follo\ving observ^ations. 



The area of arable land exceeds 400,000 ha. in each of 17 depart- 

 ments, all to the north of a line from Rochefort to Annecy ; it is for the whole 

 seventeen 7,815,980 ha. or nearly one third (32,93 %) of the whole area of 

 arable land. 



Woods extend over more than 200,000 ha. in 8 departments, in very dif- 

 ferent regions; 4 of them in the east, 3 in the south west and i in the south- 

 east. The wooded area in these eight departments alone is 2,361,893 ha. 

 or 24.31 % of the total wooded area. 



Let us observe that of the total area (9,716,915 ha.) of wooded land, 

 1,013,051 ha. are Government property. There are Government forests 

 in aU the departments, except C6tes-du-Nord, Dordogne, Lot, Lot-et-Ga- 

 ronne, Rhone and Haute- Vienne, and the territory of Belfort, but they are 

 distributed in very unequal proportions, since Vosges has 56,077 ha. of 

 Government forest and Loire only 3 ha. 



