Book I. 



AGRICULTURE IN GERMANY. 



99 



618. The rearing and care of bees was much attended to during the latter part of the 

 eighteenth century. A public school was opened at Vienna, and some in the pro- 

 vinces; and great encouragement was given to such as kept hives. Some proprietors 

 in Hungary possessed 300 stock -hives. It is customary there to transport them from 

 place to place, preferring sites where buckwheat or the lime-tree abounds. The honey, 

 when procured, is greatly encreased in value by exposure to the open air for some weeks 

 durintr winter; it then becomes hard, and as white as snow, and is sold to the manu- 

 facturers of liquors at a high price. The noted Italian liqueur, rosoglio, made also in 

 Dantzic, is nothing more than this honey blanched by frost, and spirit : though 

 the honey used is said to be that of the lime-tree, which is produced only in the forests 

 of that tree near Kowno on the Niemen, and sells at more than three times the price 

 of common honey. 



619. The live stock of Austria consists of sheep, cattle, horses, pigs, and poultry. 

 Considerable attention has lately been paid to the breeding of sheep, and tlie Merino 

 breed has been introduced 

 on the government estates, 

 and those of the great pro 

 prietors. The original Hun- 

 garian sheep {Ovis strepsi- 

 ceros)(_^5. 74. )bears upright 

 spiral horns, and is covered 

 with a very coarse wool. 

 " Improvementon this stock 

 by crosses," Dr. Bright in- 

 forms us, *' is become so 

 general, that a flock of the 

 native race is seldom to be 

 met with, excepting on the 

 estates of religious establish- 

 ments." Baron Giesler has 

 long cultivated the Merino 

 breed in Moravia. In Hun- 

 gary, Graf Hunyadi has 

 paid great and successful attention to them for upwards of twenty years. His flock, 

 when Dr. Bright saw it in 1814, amounted to 17,000, not one of which whose family 

 he could not trace back for several generations, by reference to his registers. 



620. The horned cattle of the Austrian dominions are of various breeds, chiefly Danish 

 and Swiss. The native Hungarian breed are of a dirty white color, large, vigorous, 

 and active, with horns of a prodigious length. The cow is deficient in milk ; but where 

 dairies are established, as in some places near Vienna, the Swiss breed is adopted. 



621. The Hungarian horses have long been celebrated, and considerable attempts 

 made from time to time ^o improve them by crosses with Arabian, English, and Spanish 

 breeds ; and, lately, races have been established for this purpose. The imperial breeding 

 shed, or huras of MezChegyes, established in 1783, upon four commons, is the most 

 extensive thing of the kind in Europe. It extends over nearly 50,000 acres ; employs 

 500 persons ; and contains nearly 1000 breeding mares of Besarabian, Moldavian, 

 Spanish, or English extraction. 



622. The breed of swine in some parts of Hungary is excellent. 



623. Poultry are extensively reared near Vienna, and also frogs and snails. Townson 

 has described at length the method of treating these reptiles, and of feeding geese for their 

 livers. ( Travels in Hungary in 1196, ) 



624. The land tortoise likewise occurs in 

 great numbers in various parts of Hungary, 

 more particularly about Fuzes -Gyarmath, 

 and the marshes of the river Theiss ; and 

 being deemed a delicacy for the table, is 

 caught and kept in preserves. The preserve 

 of Kesztheley encloses about an acre of land, 

 intersected by trenches and ponds, in which 

 the animals feed and enjoy themselves. In 

 one corner was a space separated from the 

 rest by boards two feet high, forming a pen , 

 for snails. The upper edge of the boards wasj 

 spiked with nails an inch in height, and atl 

 intervals of half an inch, over which these 

 animals never attempt to make their way. 

 This snail {Helix pomatia) {Jig. 15 a.) is in 



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