ITALY. 34? 



the intervention of the authorities was transformed into a system of 

 annual prizes for the encouragement of private enterprise, to be adjudged 

 to the proprietors of the best bulls and their products at the regional 

 cattle shows. This system seems to have answered better, and each 

 year the animals offered for competition are more numerous and de- 

 serving. 



The annual migration to the heights is practiced, but without system 

 or regularity and in all other respects this region has no special feature 

 of pastoral industry to command attention. 



All this tract of country is occupied by an extensive cultivation of 

 cereals often without intermission, the least possible space being allotted 

 to forage, which is generally planted along with the grain. The extent 

 of natural or permanent pasture is insiguificent, and but a small pro- 

 portion of the surface is allowed for temporary and artificial meadows 

 by the more intelligent proprietors for the purpose of special breeding, or 

 for the necessity of rotation, never exceeding one-fourth and averaging 

 more generally one- tenth. In the lower districts of Yerona from 5 to 8 

 per cent, of the surface is irrigated, an improvement much more rarely 

 found further east. 



In this exclusive cultivation of grain, which has been the fixed idea of 

 Italian agriculture for some years past, cattle are only taken into ac- 

 count for the needs of labor and manure. As a food supply the ox has 

 had, until recently, no practical importance, costing too much for the 

 consumption of the labor alike in town and country, and finding but a 

 limited demand for the few who could afford such luxury in the towns. 

 By the rural laborer it was used at rare festivals only, and cases are 

 cited of contadini who asserted that they had never tasted meat. The 

 growing international demand shows its effects so far only in those dis- 

 tricts where cattle production is a necessary resource, and there is found 

 in passing from the highlands to the bottom valley a regular decrease 

 of stock for a given area, four oxen being the average in the one case 

 on a farm of 15 to 30 acres, while in the lower plain the same number 

 serves for one of .40 to 55 acres. Here the only commercial product 

 looked for is the sale of the calves, each cow bringing in this way an 

 average gain of 120 lires=$24, and the calf, if not sold at the teat, must 

 get his living on roadsides and ditches ; if sold younger he brings only 

 $15, and if better fed he is still less profitable, so that the average re- 

 mains about the same. 



In the same transit from north to south, and from hill to plain, takes 

 place a gradual change of races, the Tyrolese, Swiss, and all their mix- 

 tures giving way to the Podolian, which here balances other types, and 

 further on along the lower rivers and coast, and it may be said in the 

 rest of Italy south of the Po, is the exclusive race of the country. 



CATTLE IN THE PROVINCE OF PADUA. 



This province is in every way the heart of the Venetian terra-firma, 

 and its agriculture best represents the state of progress in the region. 

 Its situation between plain and mountain gives an excellent average of 

 soil. Superior wealth and culture render it more open to the possibil- 

 ities of improvement, and the agrarian interests of the country at large 

 gravitate here as to their natural center. The city of Padua is the prin- 

 cipal cattle market of the surrounding provinces, and their breeding in- 

 terests owe their prosperity in part to its neighborhood. The province 

 is the best stocked of the territory, possessing 37 head to the square kilo- 

 meter, while the general average is but 25. In the northern part of the 

 province breeding and fattening for slaughter is pursued as a special 



