Book I. AGRICULTURE IN ITALY. 51 



rearing silk, and the rigid economy of the farmers, it is thought by Chateauvieux that 

 it sends more produce to market than any district of Italy, (/to/y, &c. Let. iv.) 



SuBSECT. 2. 'Of the Agriculture of Tuscany. 



276. The jiicture of the agriculture of Tuscany given by Sismondi, a distinguished 

 literary character of Geneva, who resided five years as a cultivator in that country, is vi^ell 

 known. Sismondi arranges the rural economy of this district into that of the plains, the 

 slopes, and the mountains ; and we shall here state the most interesting or characteristic 

 circumstances which occur in his work, or that of Chateauvieux, under these heads. Ac- 

 cording to Forsyth, one half of Tuscany is mountains which produce nothing but 

 timber ; one-sixth olive and vine hills, and the remaining third plain. The whole is 

 distributed into eighty thousand fattorie, or stewardships. Each fattorie includes, on an 

 average, seven farms. This property is divided among forty thousand families or cor- 

 porations. The Riccardi, the Strozzi, the Feroni, and the Benedictines rank first in the 

 number. The clergy keep the farmers well disciplined in faith, and through the terror of 

 bad crops, they begin to extort the abolished tithes. This was in 1802 : tithes are again 

 fully established under the Austrian power. 



277. The climate of Tuscany is esteemed the besfcin Italy, with the exception of that 

 of its maremme, or pestilential region on the sea-coast. The great heats commence at 

 the end of June, and diminish in the middle of September ; the rest of the year is a per- 

 petual spring, and vegetation in the plains is only interrupted for two or three weeks in 

 the middle of winter. On the mountains, there is snow all the year ; and the hilly dis- 

 tricts enjoy a temperate but irregular weather in summer, and a winter of from one to 

 three months- 



278. The soil of the plains is either sand or a mud of ** inexpressible fertility ;" some 

 parts were marshy, but the surface is now comparatively elevated and enriched (as was 

 that of the Delta) by combles, or warping, a process ably described by Sismondi. 

 (Agr. Tuscan. ii.) 



279. Irrigation in the plains is practised in all the diflferent modes as in Lombardy, 

 but on a smaller scale correspondent with their extent. 



280. The plain is every where enclosed; the fields are parallelograms, generally one 

 hundred feet broad, and four or five hundred feet long, surrounded by a ditch 

 planted with Lombardy poplars and vines, with rows lengthways, of mulberries, maple or 

 the flowering or manna ash, also interspersed with vines ; and 36 



often by the way-sides, hanging in festoons, from tali elms ~ 



(Jig. 36.). The poplars supply leaves for feeding heifers, 

 rods wliich are sold for making espaliers for vines, and spray 

 for fuel. Every now and then a few are cut down for timber, 

 as at twenty years they are found to be too large for the situ 

 ation. The top of the ash and maple is used for fuel ; the 

 timber for implements of husbandry. The mulberry is pol- 

 larded every other year for the leaves, which are stripped off 

 for the silkworms, and the spray used as fuel. The produce 

 of raw silk is one of the most important in Tuscany, and is almost the only article 

 the farmer of the plains has to exchange for money. He has wine also, it is true, but 

 that, though produced in abundance, is of so wretched a quality, compared with that of 

 the hills, that it brings but little. Hedges are only planted on the road sides to keep ofT 

 beggars and thieves, who are very numerous, and who steal the grapes and the ears of 

 maize. Sometimes the grapes next the road are sprinkled with mud or lime-water to 

 deter them ; at other times a temporary dead fence of thorns is used during the ripening 

 season and taken down afterwards. The hedge plants are the hawthorn, sloe, bramble, 

 briar, evergreen rose, ilex, service, myrtle, pomegranate, bay, laurel, &c. 



281. In the arable lands of the plains the row and mostly the raised drill-culture is 

 generally followed, or the land is ploughed into beds of three or four feet broad, between 

 which water is introduced in the furrows. Every year a third of the farm is turned 

 over with a spade to double the depth of the plough, so as to bring a new soil to the sur- 

 face. The sort of trenching which effects this is- performed differently from that of any 

 other country; the spade being thrust in horizontally or obliquely, and the trench formed 

 by taking off successive layers from the top of the firm side, and turning them regularly 

 over in the trench. In this way the surface is completely reversed. 



282. The rotation of crops in the plain includes a period of three or five years, and five 

 or seven crops. There are, for a three-year's course ; 1. wheat or other grain, and lupins 

 in the autumn ; 2. corn of some sort, and turnips or clover in the autumn ; 3. maize, 

 panic, or common millet, and Indian or black millet [Holcus sorghum) . Corn is cut 

 about the end of June close to the earth, left to dry a day or two, and then tied in bundles 

 (hottes), and put in cocks for a week or two. At the end of this period the ears are cut 

 off and beaten out on a smooth prepared piece of ground in the farm.yard. The straw 



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