168 On the Manufacture of Italian Bonnets, &c. 
I have been informed that the crop of two acres is sufli- 
cient for all the straw of the hat manufacture in Tuscany. 
This straw is the product of a beardless wheat, harvested 
before it is quite ripe and whose vegetation is whitened by 
the sterility of the soil. This soil is selected among the 
ealcareous hills; it is never manured, and the seed is sowed 
very thick. These habitations so near to each other, shew 
of themselves, that the domains to which they belong are 
very limited, and that property is remarkably subdivided 
in these valleys. n fact, the extent of aa little planta- 
tions is only from three to ten acres. ey lie around the 
dwelling, and separated into lots by small als and rows 
of trees. These trees are sometimes mulberries, almost 
always poplars, whose leaves serve to feed their animals. 
Each of them sustains a vine, whose brateles the cultiva- 
tor entwines in a thousand directions. 
These lots, laid out in long squares are extensive enough 
io be cultivated by a plough without wheels drawn by two 
oxen. There is one pair of these creatures among ten or a 
dozen of these tenants; and they” are employed i in succes- 
‘sion for working all the farms in the connection. These 
oxen come from the states of Rome, or Maremmes ; they 
are of the Hungarian breed ; and are exceedingly well kept, 
being covered with white cloths, decorated with a great 
deal of embroidery and with scarlet tassels. 
Most of these land-laboures, keep a horse of a fine and 
elegant form. e is harnessed to a small two-wheeled 
cart neatly constructed and painted red. It serves for all 
the purposes of transportation on the farm, and more espe- 
cially to convey the good man’s daughters to the mass and 
the ball. Acco sediagly on holidays, the roads are filled 
with hundreds of these little carts, moving in all directions, 
and ‘carrying the young girls adorned with flowers and rib- 
ban 
The farms of the valley of the Arno, have not ‘forage 
ae to Ip Phe cows ; the cultivators therefore raise 
hese they buy at the age of three months, 
the pastures of Maremmes sha the drovers pats Th the 
iets to the fairs in the valley of Arno 
