Book I. 



AGRICULTURE IN FRANCE. 



69 



402. Poultry is an important article of French husbandry, and well understood as far 

 as breeding and feeding. Birkbeck thinks the consumption of poultry in towns may be 

 equal to that of mutton. The smallest cottage owns a few hens, 

 which often roost under cover, in a neat little structure (Jig. 47. ), 

 elevated so as to be secure from dogs, wolves, and foxes. 



*403. The breed of sitine is in general bad ; but excellent hams are 

 sent from Bretagne, from hogs reared on acorns, and fatted off 

 with maize. Pigeon-houses are not uncommon. 



404. The management of fish-ponds is well understood in France, 

 owing to fish in all catholic countries being an article of necessity. 

 In the internal district there are many large artificial ponds, as well 

 as natural lakes, where the eel, carp, pike, and a few other species, are 

 reared, separated, and fed, as in the Berkshire ponds in England. 



405. The implements and operations of the common farms of 

 France are in general rude. The ploughs of Normandy resemble 

 the large wheel-ploughs of Kent. Those farther south are generally 

 without wheels ; often without coulters ; and an iron mould-board 

 is rare. In many parts of the south the ploughs have no mould- 

 board, and turn the earth in the manner of the simplest form of 

 Roman plough. (1 10.) Harrows are in general wholly of wood; and, 

 instead of a roller, a plank is for the most part used. Large fanner; 



plough with four or six oxen 



as in Normandy, 

 small fanners with two, or even one ; or, when stiff 



soils are to be worked out 

 of season, they join to- 

 gether, and form a team of 

 four or six cattle. Their 

 carts are narrow and long, 

 with low wheels, seldom 

 shod in the remote parts 

 of the country. The guim- 

 barde of the Seine and 

 Oise (fig. 48.) is a light 

 and useful machine. Corn is reaped with sickles, hooks, and the Brabant and cradle 

 scythes, (fig- 49.) Threshing, in «v 



Normandy, is performed with the flail 

 in houses, as in England ; in the 

 other climates, in the open air with 

 flails, or by the tread of horses. There 

 are few permanent threshing-floors ; 

 a piece of ground being smoothed in 

 the most convenient part of the field 

 is found sufficiently hard. Farmers, 

 as we have already observed, perform 

 most of their operations without extra 

 labourers : and their wives and daugh- 

 ters reap, thresh, and perform almost every part of the farm and garden work indifferently. 

 Such farmers " prefer living in villages ; society and the evening dance being nearly as 

 indispensable to them as their daily food. If the farm be distant, the farmer and" his 

 servants of all descriptions set off early in the morning in a light waggon, carrying with 

 them their provisions for the day." (Keill.) Hence it is, that a traveller in France may 

 pass through ten or twenty miles of corn-fields, without seeing a single farm-house. 



406. Large farms, which are extremely rare, have generally farmeries on the lands ; 

 and there the labour is in great part performed by labourers, who, as well as the tradesmen 

 employed, are frequently paid in kind. (Birkbeck.) 



*407. Ml the plants cultivated by the British farmer are also grown in France ; the 

 turnip not generally, and in the warm districts scarcely at all, as it does not bulb; but 

 it is questionable, whether, if it did bulb, it would be so valuable in these districts as the 

 lucerne, or clover, which grow all the winter ; or the potato, from which flour is now 

 made extensively ; or the field beet, which may be used either as food for cattle, or for 

 yielding sugar. Of plants not usually cultivated on British farms may be mentioned, 

 the chiccory for green food, fuller's thistle for its heads, furze and broom for green 

 food, madder, tobacco, poppies for oil, rice in Dauphine (but now dropped as pre- 

 judicial to health), saffron about Angouleme, Zathyrus sativus, the pois Breton or 

 lentil of Spain, iathyrus setifolius, Ticia Zathyrciides and sativa, Cicer arietinum, iTrvum 

 i£ns, il/elilotus sibirica, Coronilla varia, iJedysarum coronarium, &c. They have a hardy 

 red wheat, called I'epeautre (spelt), which grows in the worst soil and climates, and is 

 common in Alsace and Suabia. They grow the millet, the dura or douro of Egvpt 



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