Book I. AGRICULTURE IN SWITZERLAND. 59 



gin, a house (c) is constructed for those who take care of the oysters, and who sell thsm to 

 the dealers in Naples, or to those who come and eat them on the spot. Adjoining the 

 house is a covered enclosure ;6), where the oysters are kept till wanted; and along the 

 margin of the lake, and in most parts of it, are placed circles of reeds, with their summits 

 above the water (a). The spawn of the oysters attaches itself to these reeds, and grows 

 there till of an edible size : they are then removed to the reserve i6), and kept there till 

 wanted. In removing them the reeds are pulled up one by one, examined, and the 

 full-grown oysters removed and put in baskets, while the small sized and spawn are suf- 

 fered to remain, and the reed is replaced as it was. The baskets are then placed in the 

 reserve, and not emptied till sold. In two years from the spawn, Lasteyrie observes, the 

 oyster is fully grown. 



Sect. II. Of the present State of Agriculture in Switzerland. 



326. The agriculture of Switzerland, though of a very primitive kind, is not witl)- 

 out interest from the nice attentions required in some paits of its operations. The 

 surface, soil, and climate of the country, are so extraordinarily irregular and diversified, 

 that in some places grapes ripen, and in many others corn will not arrive at maturity ; on 

 one side of a hill the inhabitants are often reaping, while they are sowing on "the other; 

 or they are obliged to feed the cattle on its summits with leaves of evergreens while they 

 are making hay at its base. A season often happens in which rains during harvest pre- 

 vent the corn from being dried, and it germinates, rots, and becomes useless ; in others it 

 is destroyed by frost. In some cases there is no corn to reap from the effect of summer 

 storms. In no country is so much skill required in harvesting corn and hay as Switzer- 

 land ; and no better school could be found for the study of that part of Scotch and Irish 

 farming. After noticing some leading features of the culture of the cantons which form 

 the republic, we shall cast our eye on the mountains of Savoy. 



SuBSECT. 1. Of the Agriculture of the Swiss Cantons. 



327. Agriculture began to attract public attention in Sivitzerland about the middle of 

 the eighteenth century. In 1759 a society for the promotion of rural economy esta- 

 blished itself at Berne : they offered premiums and have published some useful papers in 

 several volumes. Long before that period, however, the Swiss farmers were considered 

 the most exact in Europe. (^Stanyans Account of Switzerland in 1714.) Chateauvieux at- 

 tributes the progress which agriculture has made, near Vevay, on the lake of Geneva, to 

 the settlement of the protestants, who emigrated tliither from France, at the end of the 

 seventeenth century. They cut the hills into terraces, and planted vines, which has so 

 much encreased the value of the land, that what was before worth little, now sells at 

 10,000 francs per acre. {Let. xxi.) Improvement in Switzerland is not likely to be 

 rapid ; because agriculture there is limited almost entirely to procuring the means of 

 subsistence, and not to the employment of capital for profit. 



328. Landed property in Switzerland is minutely divided, and almost always farmed 

 by the proprietors and their families : or it is in immense tracts of mountain belonging 

 to the bailiwicks, and 'pastured in common : every proprietor and burgess having a right 

 according to the extent of his property. These peasants are, perhaps, the most frugal 

 cultivators in Europe : they rear numerous families, a part of which are obliged to emi- 

 grate, because there are few manufactures ; and land is excessively dear, and seldom in 

 the market. 



329. Thevallies of the alpine regions of Switzerland are subject to very peculiar injuries 

 from the rivers, mountain-rocks, and glaciers. As the rivers are subject to vast and 

 sudden inundations, from the thawing of the snow on the mountains, they bring down 

 at such times an immense quantity of stones, and spread them over the bottoms of the 

 vallies. Many a stream, which appears in ordinary times inconsiderable, has a stoney 

 bed of half a mile in breadth, in various parts of its course; thus a portion of the finest 

 land is rendered useless. The cultivated slopes at the base of the mountains are subject 

 to be buried under eboulenients, when the rocks above fall down, and sometimies cover 

 many square miles with their ruins. 



330. EbouJement (Fr.), denotes a falling down of a mountain or mass of rock, and consequent covering 

 the lower grounds with its fragments ; when an immense quantity of stones are suddenly brought down 

 from the mountains by the breaking or thawing of a glacier, it is also called an eboulement. {Bakewell^ 

 vol. i. p. 11.) Vast eboulements are every year falling from the enormous precipices that overhang the 

 valley of the Rhone : many of these are recorded which have destroyed entire villages. 



331. One of the most extraordinary eboulements ever known was that of Mont Grenier, five miles south 

 of Chamberry. A part of this mountain fell down in the year 1248, and entirely buried five parishes, and 

 the town and church of St. Andre. The ruins spread over an extent of about nine square miles, and are 

 called les Abytnes de Myans. After a lapse of so many centuries, they still present a singular scene of 

 desolation. The catastrophe must have been most awful when seen from the vicinity ; for Mont Gre- 

 nier is almost isolated, advancing into a broad plain, which extends to the valley of the Isere. 



332. Mont Grenier rises very abruptly upwards of 4()00 feet above the plain. Like the mountauis of 

 l^s Echelles, with which it is connected, it is capped with an immense mass of limestone strata, not less 

 than 600 feet in thickness, which presents on every side the appearance of a wall. The strata dip gently 

 lo the side which fell into the plain. This mass of limestone rests on a foundation of softer strata, pro- 



