Florence 277 



fessor reads lectures in summer. The establishment of such a 

 garden does honour to a sovereign ; because it marks an attention 

 to objects of importance. But it is greatly to be regretted they 

 do not go one step further, and, instead of a garden, have a farm 

 of not less than three hundred English acres : most of them are 

 possessors of farms; a well situated one might easily be chosen, 

 and the whole conducted at an expense that would be amply 

 repaid by the practical benefits flowing from it. Signore 

 Zucchino's garden is much cleaner, and in neater order than any 

 other I have seen in Italy : but it is not easy to form experiments 

 in a few acres that are applicable to the improvement of a 

 national agriculture. He is an active, animated character, 

 attached to the pursuit (no small merit in Italy), and would 

 make a very good use of his time if the Grand Duke would do with 

 him as the King of Naples has done by his friend Signore Balsamo 

 — send him to practise in England. I told him so, and he liked 

 the idea very much. We had some conversation concerning 

 Signore Balsamo, agreeing that he had considerable talents and 

 great vivacity of character. I regretted that he was to stay only 

 a year in England ; but admitted that there were few men who 

 could make so good a use of so short a period. Signore Zucchino 

 showed me the MS. account of my farm which Signore Balsamo 

 had sent him.^ A professor of agriculture, in Sicily, being sent 

 by his sovereign, and wisely sent, to England for instruction in 

 agriculture, appears to me to be an epoch in the history of the 

 human mind. From that island, the most celebrated of all 

 antiquity for fruitfulness and cultivation, on whose exuberance 

 its neighbours depended for their bread — and whose practice the 

 greatest nations considered as the most worthy of imitations : at 

 a period too when we were in the woods, contemned for barbarity, 

 and hardly considered as worth the trouble of conquering. 

 What has effected so enormous a change ? Two words explain 

 it: we are become free and Sicily enslaved. We were joined 

 at the garden by my good friend from Milan, the Abbate 

 Amoretti, a new circumstance of good fortune for me. To-day, in 

 my walk in the gallery, I had some conversation with Signore 

 Adamo Fabbroni, brother to the gentleman I mentioned before, 

 and author also of some dissertations on agriculture; particularly 

 Sopra il quesito, indicare le vere teorie delle stime dei terreni, from 

 which I inserted an extract in the Annals of Agriculture, — also a 

 Journal of Agriculture, published at Perugia, where he resided 

 seven years; but as it did not succeed for more than three, he 

 * I fixed him in my neighbourhood in Suffolk. — Author's note. 



