Book I* 



AGRICULTURE IN ITALY. 



57 



hard, little being left for our pains ; and if the season is not propitious, the metayer has 

 much to complain of." {Letters on Italy.) 



318. The cotton plant (Gossypium herbaceum) {Jig. 40.) is beginning to be cultivated 

 in the neighbourhood of Vesuvius, and in Sicily. It is sown 

 in March, in lines three feet distant, and the plants two 

 feet apart in the lines. The earth is stirred by a one-horse 

 plough, or by hoes, and carefully weeded. As soon as the 

 flowering season is over, about the middle of September, the 

 ends of the shoots are nipped off, to determine the sap to the 

 fruit. The capsules are collected as they ripen ; a tedious 

 process, lasting two months : the cotton and the seeds are then 

 separated ; an operation still more tedious. Tlie most ex/- 

 tensive cotton farmers are in the vale of Sorento. There the 

 rotation is, 1 . maize ; 2. wheat, followed by beans, which 

 ripen next March; 3. cotton; 4. wheat, followed by clover ; 

 5. melons, followed by French or common beans. Thus, in 

 five years, are produced eight crops. In this district, wherever 

 water can be commanded, it is distributed, as in Tuscany and 

 Lombardy, among every kind of crop. 



"319. The tomato, or love apple (5'olanum Lycop^rsicum L.), 

 so extensively used in Italian cookery, forms also an article of 



field culture near Pompeii, and especially in Sicily, whence they are sent to Naples, Rome, 

 and several towns on the Mediterranean sea. It is treated much in the same way as the 

 cotton plant. 



320. The orange, lemon, peach, fig, and various other fruits, are grown in the Nea- 

 politan territory, both for home use and exportation : but their culture we consider to 

 belong to gardening. 



321. The Neapolitan maremmes, near Salerno, to the evils of those of Rome, add 

 that of a wretched soil. They are pastured by a few herds of buffaloes and oxen ; the 

 herdsmen of which have no other shelter during the night than reed huts ; these desert 

 tracts being without either houses or ruins. The plough of this ancient Greek colony is 

 thought to be the nearest to that of Greece, and has been already adverted to (31.). 



322. The manna, a concrete juice, forms an article of cultivation in Calabria. This 

 substance is nothing more than the exsiccated juice of the flowering ash tree (O'rnus 

 rotundifolia), which grows there wild in abundance. In April or May, the peasants 

 make one or two incisions in the trunk of the tree with a hatchet, a few inches deep ; and 

 insert a reed in each, round which the sap trickles down : after a month or two they return, 

 and find this reed sheathed with manna. The use of manna, in medicine, is on the decline. 



323. The filberts and chestnuts of the Calabrian Apennines are collected by the farmers, 

 and sold in Naples for exportation or consumption. 



324. The culture of indigo and sugar was attempted in the Neapolitan territory, under 

 the reign of Murat. The indigo succeeded ; but suflficient time had not elapsed to judge 

 of the sugar culture when it was abandoned. Tlie plants, however, grew vigorously, and 

 their remains may still (1819) be seen in the fields near Terracina. 



325 Oysters have been bred and reared in the kingdom of Naples from the time of the 

 Romans. The subject is mentioned by Nonnius {De Eeb. Cib., I. iii. c 37.) ; and by 



Pliny (Nat. Hist., b. xviii. c. 54.). Count Lasteyrie (Col. des Mach.) describes the place 

 mentioned by the latter author, as it now exists in the Lake Facino, at Baia. This lake 

 (fig. 41.) communicates with the sea by a narrow passage. On the water near its margin, 



