Book I- 



AGRICULTURE IN GERMANY. 



99 



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em % 



631. The rtaring and care of bees were much attended to during the latter part of 

 the eighteenth century ; with a view to which a public school was opened at Vienna and 

 some in the provinces ; and great encouragement was given to such as kept hives. Some 

 proprietors in Hungary possessed 300 stock hives. It is customary there to transport 

 them from place to place, preferring sites where buckwheat or the lime tree abounds. The 

 honey, when procured, is greatly increased in value by exposure to the open air for some 

 weeks during winter ; it then becomes hard and as white as snow, and is sold to the ma- 

 nufacturers of liquors at a high price. The noted Italian liqueur, roso'dio, made also in 

 Dantzic, is nothing more than this honey blanched by exposure to the frost, mixed with a 

 spirituous liquor : though the honey used is said to be that of the lime tree, which is 

 produced only in the forests of that tree near Kowno on the Niemen, and sells at more 

 than three times the price of common honey. 



632. The live stock* of Austria consists of sheep, cattle, horses, pigs, and poultry. 

 Considerable attention has lately been paid to the breeding of sheep, and the Merino 



breed has been introduced 

 on the government estates 

 and those of the great pro- 

 prietors. The original Hun- 

 garian sheep ( (7 vis strepsi- 

 ceros)(^g.70.)bears upright 

 spiral horns, and is covered 

 with a very coarse wool. 

 " Im provement on this stock 

 by crosses," Dr. Bright in- 

 forms us, " is become so 

 general, that a flock of the 

 native race is seldom to be 

 met with, except on the 

 estates of religious establi sli . 

 ments." Baron Giesler has 

 long cultivated the Merino 

 breed in Moravia. In Hun- 

 gary, Graf Hunyadi has 

 paid great and successful attention to them for upwards of twenty years His flock, 

 when Dr. Bright saw it in 1814, amounted to 17,000, not one of which whose family he 

 could not trace back for several generations by reference to his registers. 



633. The horned cattle of the Austrian dominions are of various breeds, chiefly Danish 

 and Swiss. The native Hungarian breed are of a dirty white colour, large, vigorous, 

 and active, with horns of a prodigious length. The cow is deficient in milk; but where 

 dairies are established, as in some parts near Vienna, the Swiss breed is adopted. 



634. The Hungarian horses have long been celebrated, and considerable attempts 

 made from time to time to improve them by crosses with Arabian, English, and Spanish 

 breeds ; and, lately, races have been established for this purpose. The imperial breeding 

 shed, or huras, of Mezohegyes, established in 1783, upon four commons, is the most 

 extensive thing of the kind in Europe. It extends over nearly 50,000 acres ; employs 

 500 persons; and contains nearly 1000 breeding mares of Bessarabian, Moldavian, 

 Spanish, or English extraction. 



635. The breed of swine in some parts of Hungary is excellent. 



636. Poultry are extensively reared near Vienna, and also frogs and snails. Townson 

 lias described at length the method of treating these, and of feeding geese for their livers. 

 (Travels in Hungary in 1796.) 



637. The land tortoise likewise occurs in 

 great numbers in various parts of Hungary, 

 more particularly about Fuzes- Gyarmath, 

 and the marshes of the river Theiss ; and, 

 being deemed a delicacy for the table, is 

 caught and kept in preserves. The preserve 

 of Kesztheley encloses about an acre of land, 

 intersected by trenches and ponds, in which 

 the animals feed and enjoy themselves. In 

 one corner was a space separated from the 

 rest by boards two feet high, forming a pen 

 for snails. The upper edge of the boards was 

 spiked with nails an inch in height, and at 

 intervals of half an inch, over which these 

 animals never attempt to make their way. 

 This snail (Helix pomatia) {fig- 71. a) is in 



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