260 Notes and Reflections duri?ig a Toiir : — 



countries, and which he hopes that France will one day adopt 

 as a model. He spoke much of the first revolution, of which 

 he had witnessed many of the most interesting scenes. In 

 politics and morals, indeed, he is far beyond his contempora- 

 ries ; and is, in short, as far as an unlettered man can be, all 

 that Jefferson or Lafayette could wish him to be. He made 

 his fortune chiefly by taking large contracts to supply the 

 hospitals. The largest contracts he ever had were made with 

 the Hospice Salpetriere; for which on gourd-day, i.e. the 

 day on which the vegetable used in the soup served to the 

 inmates is the pumpkin or the gourd, he used to supply 

 6000 lbs. He has had a fruit of the mammoth gourd which 

 weighed 195 lbs. He had also large contracts with the ma- 

 nufacturers of sugar from the beet root ; especially during the 

 years 1812 and 1813, when the price of sugar in Paris was 

 5 francs per lb. These companies failed, for the most part, 

 in 1814 and 1815, when sugar fell to 14 sous per lb. His 

 sons still cultivate large quantities of mangold- wurzel for feed- 

 ing cows ; and it deserves to be remarked, that these culti- 

 vators, and also others in their neighbourhood, who formerly 

 used to gather a part of the leaves to sell as fodder while the 

 plants were growing, have now left off the practice, from 

 finding that it lessens the size of the roots. 



In the field-garden cvdture practised here, and in other 

 field-gardens in the neighbourhood of Paris, the soil is 

 ploughed for the crop with a two-wheeled plough ; but all the 

 operations of cleaning and gathering the crop are performed 

 by manual labour. Irrigation, either by manual labour or 

 by channels on the surface, is seldom resorted to. There is 

 no regular rotation of crops ; but in general, after three or four 

 crops of vegetables, a crop of wheat is taken, or the land is 

 sown with lucern, under which it remains from two to five 

 years. Turnips are seldom sown in the spring, because the 

 drought and insects destroy them ; but in August, after the 

 crop of peas, wheat, or rye is removed, they are sown with 

 success. Onions and leeks are sown together in February : 

 neither grow large. The onions are removed early in Sep- 

 tember, and the leeks remain to be taken up as wanted. 

 Small leeks are preferred in the Paris market, as having more 

 flavour; and the same as to onions and asparagus. Where 

 the soil is deep, soft, and inclined to moisture, the marsh- 

 mallow is cultivated for the apothecaries, and found to pay 

 well, because suitable ground for this plant is rare on secondary 

 limestone. Asparagus is grown in single rows along the 

 bottom of shallow trenches, and, instead of covering the plants 

 durino: winter as we do in Enajland, their crowns or buds are 



