ITALY. 3'45 



man, but the material is so good and so liberally employed that these 

 products furnish most of the lowland consumption, and are beginning 

 to be sought in its markets for exportation. This district contains 

 about 44,000 acres of natural pasture, with little cultivation of any 

 kind, the rest of its surface being covered by forests. 



DAIRYING IN THE LOWLANDS OF VICENZA. 



Here and in the lower province the cows, during the autumn, winter, 

 and spring, give little more than a half ration of milk, and the insig- 

 nificant production of half-skimmed mezzo-magro cheese is consumed 

 at home. They are kept, in the lowland districts, mostly in the stable 

 by the proprietor or by an industrial, who follows up his trade in the 

 mountains, rents the cow-house and buys forage of some farmer short 

 of cattle on a singular traditional contract, which gives him right of 

 pasturage after the first cutting, straw at discretion, about a cord of 

 wood and 150 faggots for every 12 loads hay he buys, and 1 liter of 

 wiue every holiday. In return he gives all the manure at the end of the 

 (season, 1 j pounds of cheese, and the same weight of butter for each 

 load of hay. 



The cows are not fed on straw stubble or Indian corn leaves, as are 

 beeves, but on grass and hay from natural meadows. These cow-houses 

 are mostly confined to the district of Yicenza, and are all very much 

 on the same plan, a long, low construction, with a file of animals on each 

 side, separated by low "partitions of wood 3 feet 2 inches high and 5 

 feet 8 long, leaving between them a stall G feet 6 wide for two Animals, 

 with a flooring raised 6 or 8 inches from the alley of 5 feet wide down 

 the middle ; grated windows over the heads of the cattle, sometimes 

 glazed in winter. The calves are tied up promiscuously at one end of 

 the stable in a space left for the purpose. 



All this lower section of the province, the summer residence of wealthy 

 families from the neighboring cities, and containing an unusual number 

 of their large estates, shows at. once the benefit of such a class of pro- 

 prietors, many of whom occupy themselves with the breeding of cattle, 

 so that by their example as well as their immediate agency the breed 

 of the country has been nearly transformed. 



The climate of this region is one of the best tempered of the territory, 

 free from the excessive humidity of the plateau above and less subject 

 to the long droughts of the lower plain. The difference from that of the 

 mountain district just described is strongly marked by the advance of 

 from fifteen days to a month in the harvests. 



At Yicenza the medium temperature is 04 F. for the year, with an 

 ordinary cold of 20.1 at the lowest in winter, and an average heat of 87.1 

 for midsummer, and a very regular transition of seasons 5 injurious 

 droughts rare, except in the most southern districts. 



In the valley of the Brenta, the soil, mostly calcareous, is only of 

 middling quality, but there is considerable cultivation of forage, and 

 the breeding of cattle is followed with a care and intelligence that 

 make Bassauo, at the opening of the plain, an important cattle market, 

 and the interest in this industry increases in descending to the neighbor- 

 ing province of Padua, which "is its principal center for Venetia. 



West of the Brcnta the torrential impetuosity of the streams which 

 traverse this intermediate region between plain and mountain, and par- 

 ticularly of the Astico, has accumulated a deposit of the glacial detritus 

 of the upper valley, making the subsoil of this central portion of the 

 province little more than a bed of stones and gravel, sometimes varied 



