5S 



HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE. 



Part I. 



318. The cotton plant {Gossypium herbaceum) {Jig. 43.) is beginning to be cultivated 

 in the neighborhood of Vesuvius, and in Sicily. It is sown in 

 March, in lines at three feet distance, and the plants two feet 

 apart in the lines. The earth is stirred by a one-horse 

 plough, or by hoes, and carefully weeded. As soon as the 

 flowering season is over, about the middle of September, the 

 ends of the shoots are nipped off, to determine the sap to the 

 fruit. The capsules are collected as they ripen; a tedious 

 process, lasting two months : the cotton and the seeds are then 

 separated; an operation still more tedious. The most ex- 

 tensive cotton farmers are in the vale of Sorento. There the 

 rotation is, 1. maize ; 2. wheat, followed by beans, which 

 ripen next March ; 3. cotton ; 4. wheat, followed by clover ; 

 5. melons, followed by French or common beans. Thus, in 

 five years, are produced eight crops. In this district, wherever 

 water can be commanded, it is distributed, as in Tuscany and 

 Lombardy, among every kind of crop. 



319. The tomato, or love ajrple {Solanum lycopersicum, L), 

 so extensively used in Italian cookery, forms also an article of 

 field-culture near Pompeii, and especially in Sicily, from whence they are sent to Naples, 

 Rome, and several towns on the Mediterranean sea. It is treated much in the same way 

 as the cotton plant. 



320. The orange, lemon, peach, Jig, ^c, with various other fruits, are grown in the 

 Neapolitan territory, both for home use and exportation : but their culture we consider 

 as belonging to gardening. 



321. The Neapolitan maremmes, near Salerno, to the evils of those of Rome, add 

 that of a wretched soil. They are pastured by a few herds of buffaloes and oxen ; the 

 herdsmen of which have no other shelter during the night than reed huts; these desert 

 tracts being without either houses or ruins. The plough of this ancient Greek colony is 

 thought to be the nearest to that of Greece, and has been already adverted to (24.) 



322. The manna, a concrete juice, forms an article of cultivation in Calabria. This 

 substance is nothing more than the exsiccated juice of the flowering ash-tree [Ornus 

 rotundifolia), which grows there wild in abundance. In April or May, the peasants 

 make one or two incisions in the trunk of the tree with a hatchet, a few inches deep ; 

 insert a reed, round which the sap trickles down, and after a month or two they return, 

 and find this reed sheathed with manna. The use of manna, in medicine, is on the 

 decline. 



323. TheJUberts and chestnuts of the Calabrian Appennines are collected by the farmers, 

 and sold in Naples for exportation or consumption. 



324. The culture of indigo and sugar was attempted in the Neapolitan territory, under 

 the reign of Murat. The indigo succeeded; and time had not elapsed to judge of the 

 sugar culture when it was abandoned. The plants, however, grew vigorously, and their 

 remains may still (1819) be seen in the fields near Terracina. 



325. Oysters have been bred and reared in the kingdom of Naples from the time of the 

 Romans. The subject is mentioned by Nonnius (De Reb. Cib. I. iii. c. 37.) ; and by 

 Pliny, {Nat. Hist. b. xviii. c.54.) Count Lasteyrie {Machines, c^'C.) describes the place 

 mentioned by the latter author, as it now exists in the lake Facino, at Baia. This lake 

 {Jig. 44. ) communicates with the sea by a narrow passage : on the water near its mar- 



