AGRICULTURE OX THE RHINE. 207 



The Heidelberg morgen corresponds precisely with the 

 English acre. 



With this dense population the small number of draught 

 cattle is strongly contrasted, and points to the hand-labour 

 employed in cultivating the soil. It is here calculated 

 that 21 acres require a pair of horses ; 14 to 17 acres 

 give work for 2 oxen ; and 7 to 10 acres to a pair of 

 milch cows. Dossenheim, with 300 families, has but 

 30 horses and 14 draught oxen ; the other lands were 

 ploughed with cows, Handschuhsheim possessed 56 

 horses and 10 draught oxen on its 937 acres of land. 

 As a result of the study of the nature of the soil 

 combined with the influence of trade, a great deal of 

 land in the immediate neighbourhood of Heidelberg, 

 Mannheim, and Schwetzingen is under vegetables. On 

 the sandy heights between Schwetzingen and the Neckar 

 tobacco is largely grown, while ordinary green and grain 

 crops cover the land of better quality that surrounds the 

 town on all sides. A similar calculation might almost be 

 supposed to have dictated the size of farms, which are small 

 near the heights, where a rich soil is found, and the cultiva- 

 tion of small plots yields a subsistence ; whereas they grow 

 larger in the plains that have a sandy soil, as well as at a 

 distance from the towns. Both this division of property 

 and the cultivation of market crops in great variety, in- 

 cluding madder, woad, and tobacco, existed here in 

 the beginning of the last century, in spite of the constant 

 wars with France and the notorious devastations which 

 accompanied them. History has preserved, as a contrast 

 to the generals who burnt the villages of the Palatinate, 

 the name of a peasant, David Mollinger, of Mausheim, 

 near Worms, as the man who first used liquid manure, 



