INTRODUCTION. XXVU 



proprietors of real estate, about limits, usurpations, and 

 encroachments. 



But the greatest benefit which government can confer 

 on agriculture, is without doubt the suppression of the 

 duty upon salt. During those years in which the sale 

 of salt was free from duty, the borders of the Mediter- 

 ranean were covered with salt-works ; immense capitals 

 were employed in forming these establishments, and they 

 sold salt to the amount of twenty millions of francs 

 per year. The tax has given a death-blow to this beau- 

 tiful scene of industry ; nearly all the salt-works are 

 abandoned. The consumption of salt has been so much 

 reduced, that the price of fifty kilogrammes (1 cwt.) 

 is not above twenty-five centimes in the salt-pits; and 

 the duty upon as much salt as is sold for one million 

 five hundred francs, produces to the treasury from forty- 

 five to sixty millions. 



In order to realize all the evil which results to agri- 

 culture from the duty upon salt, it is sufficient to know 

 the extensive advantage arising from its employment. 



Salt is of the utmost importance to all ruminating ani- 

 mals, increasing their relish for their insipid food, excit- 

 ing the action of their membranous and weak stom- 

 achs, and preventing those obstructions of the intestines 

 which are produced by the use of dry forage during the 

 winter. It is generally observed that those animals are 

 preferred in the market, which have been habitually fed 

 upon saline plants, and that their flesh is of a superior 

 quality. There is no farmer, who has not been able to 

 see the difference, at the close of a winter, between 

 those animals which have received their supply of salt 

 and those that have been deprived of it ; the first are well 



