AND LOWER EGYPT. I95 



In this, as in every thing else out of the common 

 way, the love of the marvellous has introduced its 

 exaggerated assertions. There is not, indeed, any 

 country in the world where the soil is more pro- 

 ductive than in Egypt. Nevertheless when, as an- 

 cient and modern authors have stated, they extend 

 its fruitful ness in corn as far as one, two, and even 

 three hundred grains from a single seed, they go 

 very far beyond the common rate. On the other 

 hand> those who have alleged that one measure of 

 wheat sov, n in the earth would produce ten, have 

 stopped far short of the truth. I have taken and 

 compared, in this view, the most accurate returns, 

 and I have found that, one year with another, a 

 crop of wheat produces, on an average, from twenty- 

 five to thirty grains for one. And it is of import- 

 ance to observe, that I am not speaking of count- 

 ing the number of grains produced from a single 

 one of which a particular ear maybe composed, 

 but that I mean the entire harvest, of the mass of 

 corn reaped in a given district, so that every mea- 

 sure sown gives a return of twenty-five to thirty 

 measures. In extraordinary seasons, favoured by 

 peculiar circumstances, land sown with wheat gives 

 a produce of fifty for one. I was even assured, at 

 Neguade, that, six or seven years before my arrival, 

 a farmer had reaped one hundred and fifty fold; 

 but this observation, taking the accuracy of it for 



o 2 granted, 



