FRANCE 



2298 



FRANCE 



years France is capable of producing almost 

 half of the wine of the world, but French vine- 

 growers have had a desperate struggle against 

 the phylloxera, an insect whose ravages cause 

 a formidable vine disease (see PHYLLOXERA). 

 The only satisfactory method of combating this 

 has been the grafting of French vines upon 

 American stock. The cider output of France 

 almost equals in quantity, though not in value, 

 its wine production, and in Normandy and 

 Brittany, in the north, apple trees are as char- 

 acteristic a feature of the landscape as arc 

 the vines elsewhere. Other fruits are also 

 grown in large quantities plums, cherries and 

 peaches in the northern districts and oranges 

 and lemons on the sunny Mediterranean 

 slopes; and nuts, especially chestnuts, which 

 will grow where other trees will not, are of 

 great importance. Chestnuts in France are 

 not an occasional luxury, but are a staple food, 

 the people of certain regions depending on 

 them very largely. Another tree, to the culti- 

 vation of which much attention is paid, is the 

 mulberry, which is grown not only for its 

 fruit but for its leaves, on which the silk- 

 worms feed. Silkworm-growing, however, is 

 decreasing. 



Immense quantities of beets are grown, only 

 three countries in the world surpassing France 

 in the production of beet sugar; and tobacco, 

 the cultivation of which is monopolized by the 

 government, yields valuable returns. 



Stock-raising. Grassland is comparatively 

 scarce in France, and not enough stock is raised 

 to satisfy the domestic needs. The animals 

 most successfully grown are sheep, which yield 

 an excellent quality of wool, and horses, in 

 the improvement of which the government 

 has helped largely, owing to the demand for 

 good horses in the army. The peasants make 

 much use of asses and mules. 



Forests. France has not a very extensive 

 wooded area, only about one-sixth of its sur- 

 face being under forests. Many of these are 

 forests in name only, being in fact but stretches 

 of bush. Of the forest trees, with the exception 

 of the chestnut which grows in beautiful lux- 

 uriance and renders picturesque many of the 

 stream-sides, the most important are the beech, 

 oak and elm, and in the mountain regions 

 the pines and firs. It was the destruction of 

 the forests in the mountains which made many 

 of the rivers liable to floods, and the depart- 

 ment of agriculture is doing its best to repair 

 the damage by replanting, as well as to prevent 

 the same mistake elsewhere. 



The Mineral Yield. France is one of the 

 fortunate countries which has a fairly large 

 output of the two "staple" minerals, coal and 

 iron. The coal beds are small only about 

 2,100 square miles in extent, or one-twentieth 

 the area of those of Illinois, but their produc- 

 tion is extensive, over 40,000,000 tons being 

 produced in a year. Most of this is bituminous 

 coal, of good quality. It does not supply the 

 needs of the country, and the imports of coal 

 from the neighboring mines of Belgium and 

 from England equal about half of the do- 

 mestic yield. In the War of the Nations before 

 the end of 1914 Germany had occupied the 

 richest of France's coal and iron area. 



In one of the western departments, Meurthe- 

 et-Moselle, are some of the greatest iron 

 mines in the world, and other regions yield 

 lesser quantities. Only the United States, Ger- 

 many and the United Kingdom produce more 

 iron ore than France in normal times, or manu- 

 facture greater quantities of iron and steel. 

 A large quantity of the ore smelted in the 

 country, however, is imported. 



Other metals lead, zinc, copper, antimony 

 and nickel are mined in small quantities, but 

 far more important than these are the marble 

 and other building stones which are quarried in 

 the Alps and the Pyrenees. Slate, also, of ex- 

 cellent quality, is obtained in large quantities. 

 There are mines of rock salt, but the most of 

 this mineral is evaporated from the lagoons 

 and salt marshes along the coasts. 



Manufactures. The location and extent of 

 these have been largely determined by the 

 position of the coal mines, or of the ports at 

 which British coal is landed, for fuel trans- 

 portation is not cheap in France. Of late 

 years there has been a tendency in the manu- 

 facturing industries to seek the high mountain 

 valleys, for there water power is available, and 

 the electricity generated from it supplies alf 

 fuel deficiencies. French workmen have a pe- 

 culiar skill rarely attained by the artisan-class 

 in other countries, and various outputs of 

 French factories are in great demand. No- 

 where else are such exquisite laces and gauze, 

 such tapestries and shawls and gloves pro- 

 duced; and certain regions make the most 

 artistic glass and chinaware in the world. 



Most important by all means are the textile 

 manufactures, and among these the silk indus- 

 try, which centers at Lyons, used to rank fore- 

 most. To-day, however, it is third, both 

 woolen and cotton manufactures surpassing it, 

 the former in the ratio of two and one-half 



