NATURAL HISTORY OF COMMERCE. 



NATURAL HISTORY <>K 

 OEAFTEB 



rOBKIUN PRODUCE: KUUOl'B. 



Inter-Chang* of Suri-Uw Produce with Europawn Countries imrttt to 

 England The Viue Wheat i'ruduotioiu of Spain and Portugal. 



survey of I ho raw product) of tin: I5riii.li empire, 

 .ned a knowledge, not only <>t' tin: great variety 

 ami abundance of natural substan. -ury to our 



well-being, l>ut, also df tin! .surplus which wo can oll'-r 

 to other countries- iu exchange for their productions, 

 BO as to add to our wealth. To understand the 

 productions wo must learn something 

 of tho countries thai product! thorn. It will be 

 Lieut, to study such countries in tho zones of 

 climate to which they belong. Incidentally we have 

 already d>ne this, inasmuch as the detached parts of 

 tin- British empire are dispersed through every zone. 

 II that organic products spread from certain 

 centres, according to their natural powers of selection, 

 as well as l>v human agency; and that they either extend 

 their hounds to tho utmost limits of the zone of their 

 Drouth, or, subdued by stronger types of life, they die 

 out, thus illustrating tho law of tho "survival of tho 

 In assigning to every organic product its own 

 climatic region, where alone it reaches tho highest ex- 

 cellence, Nature has made interchange a necessity. 



Next to tho produce of tho British empire wo are 

 ^ted in tho produce of tho countries nearest to 

 us, for it is with these countries that tho system of 

 interchange begins. 



Europe. Three climatic zones are well defined in 

 Europe : they are the warm temperate, tho temperate, 

 and the boreal. Each of these zones is disturbed by 

 local deviations, produced by tho mountains and other 

 physical causes, and ia divisible into sub-zones of 

 produce, with outlines less clearly marked. Southern 

 Europe is bounded by the Mediterranean, into which sea 

 mountain-spurs trend southward, whose lateral out- 

 spread forms the peninsulas of the Morea, Italy, and tho 

 insular line of Corsica and Sardinia. The inland boun- 

 dary of this southern zone is the line of vine growth, 

 which we have already referred to, waving across 

 Europe south of the limits of 45 on the coast of the 

 Bay of Biscay, and 55 on the northern coast of the 

 Caspian Sea. Tho vine flourishes in every part of this 

 region, which is distinguished by the name of the Wine 

 Countries. Nevertheless, the subdivisions of this zone 

 possess an individual character. An elevated ridge line, 

 traceable from tho cliffs of Brittany, across the extinct 

 water-filled craters of Auvergne, to the Alps, and thence 

 onwards to the Carpathians, divides tho sunny south 

 from Northern Europe, and defends it from the boreal 

 winds. The region is unique for beauty and fertility. 

 Clear air gives an extensive view of tho landscape, and 

 the sun, pouring down its rays unarrcstcd by vapour, 

 draws from tho fruitful ground tho blended produce of 

 the tropics and temperate zones. The southern parts of 

 Spain, Italy, and Greece even trench upon the region of 

 palms, which bear fruit in several places, but elsewhere 

 only develop their regal crown of leaves. The slopes of 

 Etna are girdled with bands of vegetation, exemplifying 

 horizontal zones of growth, from the date-palm, cotton, 

 jsugar-cane, pine-apple, and prickly pear at the base, 

 through citrons and evergreens, and a wooded region of 

 leaf-shedding forest-trees, that hybernate in winter, up- 

 wards to the stunted vegetation of colder lands, and steri- 

 lity round the crater. In Naples the cotton plant divides 

 the field with the hemp and flax, and the fig attains 

 perfection almost alongside of the oak and fir. Between 

 Naples and the Alpine ridge, in Switzerland, every diver- 

 sity of the zone is lighted uoon. South of the mountains 

 tho olive "swells with floods of oil," almost us bounteous 



108 SB. 



as water, and as freely used; the few parts subject to local 

 frosty winds, where it will not grow, being too unim- 

 portant to rank as exceptions. It is the representative 

 plant of tho sub-zone, and is indigenous; whereas the 

 orange and peach, the grape, cherry, and fig were brought 

 from Asia, and maize was a gift from the Mow World, in 

 return for the European cereals and domestic cattle. 

 Tho Alpine heights, in strong contrast with much of 

 Italy, endure an Arctic climate. The valleys alone can 

 bo called fertile, and there is elsewhere scarcely any 

 soil. It in only as tho resultant of many differences 

 that wo include tho whole region in one climatic zone. 

 Tho /act- -a or physiognomy of the vegetation is complex. 

 Tho vine and its attendant cereal, wheat, are distinctive 

 throughout; but the almond, olive, fig, and citron, sweet 

 chestnut and hazel, together with the cork oak, myrtle, 

 and other evergreens, the almond, fig, and the lily tribe, 

 are only common in the warmer parts. 



Tlie Vine. The vine, simply as a plant, ranges as 

 widely as wheat, but, for vintage purposes, it is of little 

 avail higher than 40 W , going off afterwards into leaf, and 

 running to waste on approaching the equator, where 

 also wheat is no longer profitably grown. The vine, 

 like tho annuals, requires a certain amount of heat to 

 ripen its fruit, and bears a cold winter better than a 

 cool summer. This heat may accumulate, in warm lati- 

 tudes, between March and September; while in Scandi- 

 navia, where tho wholo operations of husbandry are com- 

 pleted in three months, and barley is sown and reaped in 

 seven weeks, the necessary amount of heat rarely occurs. 

 It is not by any means the line of mean annual beat, 

 but the amount of seasonal heat, that fits or unfits plants 

 for certain latitudes. Beyond its natural limits the fruit 

 of the vine can only be extorted from the soil by labour 

 and skill, while, in its own zone, " profusion is lavished 

 on the ignorance of tho vine-dressers of Italy and on the 

 indolence of Spain." 



In France, the vine is pruned down to the size of a 

 gooseberry bush, and the vineyards consequently lose 

 interest in the landscape ; but in Italy, vines cover the 

 hill terraces, and twine among the pollard elms and 

 olives. The pendent racemes or bunches of purple fruit 

 are of delicious coolness and flavour in health, and a 

 grateful refreshment to the fevered tongue in sickness. 



Raisins. As a proper food product, the dried fruit of 

 the vine is of no mean importance, and many commodi- 

 ties could be better spared than the " plums " of common 

 language, and the so-called " currants," British taste for 

 which is so marvellous, that a failure in the Spanish 

 or Greek crop would bo felt like a national calamity. 

 Plum-pudding is an established Christmas institution, 

 and poverty can give no sharper sting to tho poorest 

 household than to deny a share in this festive rite. 



Wheat. Wheat throughout the wine countries reaches 

 its greatest perfection ; but it also flourishes in other 

 zones, and therefore does not so well serve as a type of 

 a region to which the vine, for vintage purposes, ia 

 limited. Wheat grows within tho tropics as a whiter crop, 

 but other grains grow there to greater advantage : thus, 

 on approaching tho tropics we see it gradually displaced 

 by maize, and then by rice, tho true tropical cereals. 

 Andalusia produces wheat as fino as any in Europe, and 

 is the storehouse of the Peninsula. Nature has endowed 

 Spain with gifts that would make it tho paradise of a 

 wealthy and powerful nation, did not the perversity of 

 man frustrate the design. With a climate and soil fitted 

 for the finest agriculture, only a third of tho land is 

 arable ; end though the harvest is abundant, the corn is 

 oftentimes left to rot upon tho fields, tho cost of transit 

 being too great, owing to bad roads and banditti. 

 Corsica and Sardinia were the granaries of ancient 

 Rome. In Italy the arable land is covered with the 

 grateful shade of the olive and mulberry, and the vine, 



