ITALY. 33 i> 



entirely in tlie plain, is in high cultivation. Its norther border, includ- 

 ing the last foot-hills and slopes, and sheltered by the Alps, which here 

 reach greater elevations, is specially suited by soil and southern expos- 

 ure for vine growing. This is at present the prevailing interest of the 

 province, ami absorbs public attention to the prejudice of other im- 

 provements; so that cattle-breeding, which had never received much 

 attention before, seems likely to receive still less in the future. It is 

 complained that the present stock is not sufficient for manure, and 

 hardly for tillage. 



CATTLE IN THE PROVINCE OF BELLUNO. 



The province of Belluno, extending north of this to the ridge of the 

 Alps, is of more interest. Here nature has mado pastoral industries 

 a necessary resource for a large proportion of the inhabitants ; and, 

 pursued with increasing zeal and intelligence, they are gaining impor- 

 tance as a means of prosperity for aregion proverbially destitute. With- 

 out the great summits or lofty plateaus of the central Alps, it belongs to 

 that zone below the limit of eternal snow attached to the flank of every 

 great mountain range, where the ridges become broken and tormented, 

 and the torrents lose themselves in deep gorges, often more inhospita- 

 ble than the broader elevations above. This region, known as the Dolo- 

 mite Alps, is celebrated for the violence of its dislocations and the rav- 

 ages of its streams and ancient glaciers, aided by the destructible ma^ 

 terial of its rocky masses. Nineteen of its peaks rise to a height of 9,200 

 feet, more or less; eleven surpass it, reaching an extreme of 10,266 

 feet. Vegetation ceases at 5,800 feet, human habitation at about 4,575, 

 and cultivation at 4,000. Deposits of vegetable soil are rare and inse- 

 cure, being always liable, even in the most favorable localities, to bo 

 swept off or buried under masses of gravel by the frequent inundations. 

 Only about one-thirteenth part of the surface is capable of any kind of 

 cultivation, the rest being largely occupied by forests, and, leaving out 

 of calculation spaces of totally barren rock, five-sevenths of the whole 

 is pasture land. 



The lower and more cultivated valley, particularly that around Belluno 

 and Feltre, the principal towns, offers a soil of moderate fertility, argil- 

 laceous calcareous, reposing on a varying substratum of marls, con- 

 glomerates, and coarse glacial detritus. In the rest of the province the 

 calcareous element prevails more generally than in other parts of the 

 Venetian territory, from the immense masses of dolomite limestone 

 which crown all the mountains of the region, exposed in cliffs and walls, 

 and which give it its striking character. These easily disaggregated 

 masses, interrupted occasionally by volcanic irruptions of porphyry and 

 beds of tufa, more rarely by deeper-lying masses of green and red sand- 

 stone or schist, form the geology of the mountains. 



The climate, though softened by southern exposure and by the ab- 

 sence of great accumulations of snow during part of the year, haa not 

 the mild and equable temperature of the Venetian plain the average 

 ranges 3 degrees lower in the southern valleys, and in the higher dis- 

 tricts has all the severity of alpine nature, with a medium temperature 

 of 0.02 O. and snowfall of 146.4 0. 



All these data suppose a rude pastoral life, merging into that of the 

 neighboring Tyrol, of which the province is indeed but the southern ex- 

 tension, and the animals of the region bear the same stamp of relation- 

 ship. The resemblance is so close that it is an unsettled question 

 whether the type known as the Bellunese is not a simple modification 



