470 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



the people. In Germany, in Belgium, in the cold and moun 

 tainous districts of France, and in Russia, it is their main depend 

 ence. To the Flemish it has been a great source of wealth 

 through their distilleries, not only in the liquor extracted from 

 it, but in the number of swine and cattle supported and fatted in 

 these distilleries, and the abundance of manure in this way pro 

 duced. There is a debtor side to this amount in the Pandora s 

 box of evils, which such a product always opens upon the com 

 munity, in the crimes, and misery, and degradation, of which it 

 is the fruitful source ; but I shall leave this, as somewhat foreign 

 from my subject, to the sober calculation of my readers.* 



The bread from rye is not deemed so nutritious as that from 

 wheat, but it is healthy and good ; and a distinguished German 

 maintains that it has a sovereign efficacy for persons whose 

 nervous organization is exhausted or deranged by sedentary pur 

 suits or intense application to study. 



Rye succeeds even on a light and dry soil. A clayey, or wet, 

 or calcareous soil is not congenial to it. It grows well even upon 

 a sandy soil, where scarcely any other grain will succeed. There 

 is no grain cultivated which yields so large an amount of straw ; 

 and this renders it valuable for litter and for the means of further 

 enriching the soil. The straw is valuable for many other pur 

 poses ; and particularly for thatching both houses and stacks of 

 grain. In France, vast amounts are used in protecting their 

 wine, when it is transported from one place to another, from the 

 sun, and in covering other merchandise on its way to market. It 

 is said that four crops of rye do not exhaust the soil so much as 

 three of wheat ; and, indeed, it has come within my own experi- 



* The distilleries in Holland, under the imposts of the government, and the 

 heavy duties upon the introduction of their produce into France, have been 

 almost entirely destroyed. 



Each of these distilleries in the course of a year fatted one hundred and eighty 

 head of cattle. The amount of grain consumed at each of them was estimated 

 at 276,765 bushels. These establishments, besides the powerful stimulus which 

 they gave to cultivation, in the market which they afforded for the grain pro 

 duced, furnished likewise the most abundant supplies of the richest manure. 



There was this advantage also arising from them, that in case of scarcity or 

 famine, the immense supplies of grain which they always had on hand, were 

 diverted from the manufacture of gin to the supply of bread for the people. This 

 was giving the loaf instead of the scorpion. 



