218 TRAVELS THROUGH 



any work happens to offer on the road, 

 which, from habit, they like much better : 

 and they, farther, from frequenting hedge 

 alehoufes and cabarats, contract an ill cuftom 

 of drunkennefs, vice, &c. learn to be 

 thieves, and extravagant, neglecting their 

 families as well as their farms -, in which 

 ffote of poverty they can do nothing well 

 upon their grounds. This evil, he afTured 

 me, was very great here, and is felt, more 

 or lefs, in moft parts of France. 



In the culture of grain, that of rye is 

 much more general than wheat, for which 

 the foil is not near fo proper. Their com- 

 mon wheat lands will not generally yield, 

 though fallowed, more than from a quarter 

 and half to two quarters an acre ; yet their 

 rye yields them two quarters and an half, 

 which makes them attend fo much more to 

 it. Barley is not fo much fown as buck- 

 wheat and oats, both which produce much 

 better crops on their foil. They are fown 

 after wheat, and in fome lands in a fyftem 

 of three crops j whereas, in general, it is 

 only two. For many years the Marquis 

 thought that the low price of corn was fo 

 great a difcouragement to the farmers in 



this 



