58 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE. Part I. 



a house (c) is constructed for those who take care of the oysters, and who sell them to 

 the dealers in Naples, or to those who come and eat them on the spot ; and adjoining 

 the house is a covered enclosure (b), where the oysters are kept till wanted. Along the 

 margin of the lake, and in most parts of it, are placed circles of reeds (a), with their sum- 

 mits above the water. The spawn of the oysters attaches itself to these reeds, and grows 

 there till of an edible size : the oysters are then removed to the reserve (6), and kept there 

 till wanted. In removing them the reeds are pulled up one by one, examined, and the 

 full-grown oysters removed and put in baskets, while the small-sized and spawn are suffered 

 to remain, and the reed is replaced as it was. The baskets are then placed in the reserve, 

 and not emptied till sold. In two years from the spawn, Lasteyrie observes, the oyster 

 is fully grown. 



Sect. II, Of the present State of Agriculture in Switzerland. 



326. The agriculture of Switzerland is necessarily of a peculiar nature, and on a very 

 confined scale. The country is strictly pastoral ; little corn is produced, and the crops are 

 scanty and precarious. Cattle, sheep, and goats constitute the chief riches and 

 dependence of the inhabitants. Each proprietor farms his own small portion of land ; or 

 the mountainous tracts belonging to the communities are pastured in common. But, 

 whether private or common property, it is evident thai mountainous pastures are little 

 susceptible of improvement. (For. Quart, and Continent. Miscell., Jan. 1828.) 



327. Though of a very jmmitive kind, this agriculture is not without interest, from the nice 

 attention required in some parts of its operations. The surface, soil, and climate of the 

 country, are so extraordinarily irregular and diversified, that in some places grapes ripen, 

 and in many others corn will not arrive at maturity ; on one side of a hill the inhabitants 

 are often reaping, while they are sowing on the other ; or they are obliged to feed the 

 cattle on its summits with leaves of evergreens while they are making hay at its base. A 

 season often happens in which rains during harvest prevent the corn from being dried, 

 and it germinates, rots, and becomes useless ; in others it is destroyed by frost. In some 

 cases there is no corn to reap, from the effect of summer storms. In no country is so 

 much skill required in harvesting corn and hay as Switzerland ; and no better school 

 could be found for the study of that part of Scotch and Irish farming. After noticing 

 some leading features of the culture of the cantons which form the republic, we shall cast 

 our eye on the mountains of Savoy. 



SuBSECT. 1. Of the Agriculture of the Swiss Cantons. 



328. Agriculture began to attract public attention in Switzerland about the middle of 

 the eighteenth century. In 1759, a society for the promotion of rural economy esta- 

 blished itself at Berne : they offered premiums, and have published some useful papers in 

 several volumes. Long before that period, however, the Swiss farmers were considered 

 the most exact in Europe. (Stanyans Account of Switzerland in 1714.) Chateauvieux 

 attributes the progress which agriculture has made, near Vevay, on the Lake of Geneva, 

 to the" settlement of the protestants, who emigrated thither from France, at the end of the 

 seventeenth century. They cut the hills into terraces, and planted vines, which has so 

 much increased the value of the land, that what was before worth little, now sells at 

 10,000 francs per acre. {Let. xxi.) Improvement in Switzerland is not likely to be 

 rapid ; because agriculture there is limited almost entirely to procuring the means of 

 subsistence, and not to the employment of capital for profit. 



329. Landed property in Switzerland is minutely divided, and almost always farmed 

 by the proprietors and their families : or it is in immense tracts of mountain belonging 

 to the bailiwicks, and pastured in common : every proprietor and burgess having a right 

 according to the extent of his property. These men are, perhaps, the most frugal 

 cultivators in Europe : they rear numerous families, a part of which is obliged to 

 emigrate, because there are few manufactures ; and land is excessively dear, and seldom 

 in the market. 



330. The valleys of the Alpine regions of Switzerland are subject to very peculiar injuries 

 from the rivers, mountain rocks, and glaciers. As the rivers are subject to vast and 

 sudden inundations, from the thawing of the snow on the mountains, they bring down 

 at such times an immense quantity of stones, and spread them over the bottoms of the 

 valleys. Many a stream, which appears in ordinary times inconsiderable, has a stony 

 bed of half a mile in breadth, in various parts of its course ; thus a portion of the finest 

 land is rendered useless. The cultivated slopes, at the bases of the mountains, are subject 

 to be buried under eboulemens, when the rocks above fall down, and sometimes cover 

 many square miles with their ruins. 



SSI. E'boulement (Fr.) denotes a falling down of a mountain or mass of rock, and consequent covering 

 of the lower grounds with its fragments ; when an immense quantity of stones are suddenly brought down 

 from the mountains by the breaking or thawing of a glacier, it is also called an eboulement. {Bakcwell, 

 vol. i. p. 11.) Vast eboulemens are every year falling from the enormous precipices that overhang the 

 valley of the Rhone ; many of these are recorded which have destroyed entire villages. 



