6 RURAL ECONOMY OF ENGLAND. 



verbial ; its extreme humidity is little favourable to 

 wheat, which is the prime object of all cultivation ; few 

 plants ripen naturally under its dull sky ; it is propitious 

 only to grasses and roots. Eainy summers, late autumns, 

 and mild winters, encourage, under the influence of an 

 almost equal temperature, an evergreen vegetation. Here 

 its action stops ; nothing need be asked of it which de- 

 mands the intervention of that great producing power, 

 the sun. 



How superior are the soil and climate of France ! In 

 comparing with England, not the fourth only, but the 

 north-west half of our territory that is to say, the 

 thirty-six departments grouped around Paris, exclusive 

 of Brittany we find more than twenty-two millions of 

 hectares, which surpass in quality, as they do in extent, 

 the thirteen millions of English hectares. Scarcely any 

 mountains ; few natural marshes ; extensive plains, sound 

 almost throughout ; a soil sufficiently deep, and of a 

 nature most favourable to production ; rich deposits in the 

 broad valleys of the Loire and Seine, with their tribu- 

 taries ; a climate not so moist, but warmer less favour- 

 able perhaps to meadow vegetation, but more suitable for 

 ripening wheat and other cereals ; all the productions of 

 England obtained with less trouble ; and, in addition, 

 other valuable products, such as sugar, textile and olea- 

 ginous plants, tobacco, wine, fruits, &c. 



It would be easy to carry out this comparison step by 

 step, and to oppose, for example, to Leicestershire, which 

 is the most naturally fertile of the English counties, our 

 magnificent department of the Nord, to the chalky lands 

 of Wiltshire those of Champagne, sands to sands, clays 

 to clays, loams to loams ; and thus find for most of the 

 English districts one corresponding in the north of France. 

 Such a detailed examination would demonstrate in some 



