216 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



who had been accustomed to invade and overrun the country, by King Charles, the 

 Simple, and became a duchy under the name of Normandy. The Duke of Nor- 

 mandy continued to rule the country, and the duchy became one of the most pros- 

 •perous and powerful in France. William VI, Duke of Normandy, invaded and 

 conquered England in 1066, and became King of that country, while 6till retaining 

 his dukedom. His successors in the dukedom were enterprising and powerful 

 Princes, and took an active part in the crusades and other warlike enterprises. At 

 the same time they encouraged both agriculture and navigation, and the people of 

 their sea coast were the most daring and skillful amongst the navigators of that 

 time. They conducted an active traffic with foreign countries, and as early as the 

 fourteenth century established treaty ports on the coast of Africa, and elsewliere. 

 In the sixteenth century they discovered the St. Lawrence river, and occuf)ied its 

 shores; and also eetabJished settlements in Brazil and other parts of South Amer- 

 ica. This commerce necessarily called for the establishment of seaports in France. 

 The last important of these ports was Havre, at the mouth of the Seine, founded by 

 Francis, thefirst King of France, about 1535, the previous port of Harfleu, at the month 

 of that stream, having become ineligible on account of the filling up of the.«tream by 

 alluvium, similar to what has occurred at the mouth of the Mississippi and other 

 rivers of its kind. The harbor has ever since been maintained and improved 

 at great expenditure of money, and its docks are now more extensive than those of 

 any other port except Liverpool, and its commerce equals, if not exceeds, that of any 

 French port. During the growth of the commercial property the agricultural in- 

 terests of Normandy made corresponding improvrment, this being mainly due to 

 the fact thai, unlike England, the land, iuptead of descending always in a body to 

 the eldest son, was divided among all the children, until the whole country is 

 held in small tracts. This state of things have continued until this day, and now 

 nearly the whole of France is owned by occupants of the soil, who thus have the 

 greatest interest, as it is to their advantage, to bring and keep the same in the high- 

 est state of cultivation and productiveness. The lands are now in better condition 

 than they were five hundred years ago, the policy of the farmers being to replace 

 the drain upon the soil each year by its equivalent in barn-yard manure. The 

 proprietors of land make it an invariable practice in renting to require the tenants 

 to be skillful producer- of barn-yai-d fertilizers. Such tenants have but little diffi- 

 culty in renting the best lands in Normandy. Many of these lands are occupied 

 by the fifth and sixth generation of tenants. 



Three-quarters of all the land in England is owned by lees than 20,000 proprie- 

 tors, while three-fourths of all the lands of France are owned by three-fourth* of 

 the people, who work them; hence, for seventeen consecutive years, up to the last 

 twelve years, the French farmer, with about 40,000,000 of people on a territory but 

 little larger than the State of Texas, produced a surplus of wheat, horses, cattle, 

 butter ard eggs ; and, in fact, furnishing a very large share of table supplies to 

 London. A French farmer on sixty acres of land, with but few fences to keep in 

 repair, other than mud fences, that require little or no attention after they are 

 made ; although they are about four feet at the base, they take up less than no 

 land at all, as they are four feet high and two feet wide on top, and as they are 

 universally cultiTated in grass, which is cut and grazed as grass lands are in this 



