922 FRUIT CULTURE IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES. 



like are frequently grown under the trees. If tigs are grown on a rich 

 soil they are liable to suffer from worm disease. 



No figs are dried in this island; an attempt was once made, but it 

 did not succeed. The only part of Greece where figs are cured is at Cala- 

 mata, in Messenia, but they are very inferior to the Smyrna fig ; they are 

 principally exported to Southern Kussia or to Trieste, and thence for- 

 warded to the interior of Germany, where the refuse lots are baked or 

 burnt and then ground and used as a substitute for coffee. 



A. L. CROWE, 



Consular Agent. 

 UNITED STATES CONSULAR AGENCY, 



, Zante, March 15, 1884. 



FRUIT CULTURE IN THE ALPS MARITIME. 



REPORT BY CONSUL WILSON, OF NICE. 

 [Republished from Consular Reports No. 47.] 



The Alps, projected southwards from Lake Geneva, come to an abrupt 

 termination at the Mediterranean Sea, in the department of the Alps 

 Maritime. On the one side high mountains, on the other deep water. 

 The mountains are seamed with small rivers, and their banks and the 

 sea-coast proper are fringed with narrow valleys, which, with the some- 

 times sloping hill-sides, are the only agricultural lands in the region. 



These mountains shelter the valleys from the cold north winds of the 

 Alps, while the sea tempers the sultry south winds of the Great Sahara, 

 producing a soft and equable climate, which the fashionable world has 

 declared to be the most delicious in all Europe. 



In the public gardens, and in many private ones, too, the palm trees, 

 the cocoa, the cacti, and the aloe flourish. Flowers bloom in banks of 

 loveliness of color and fragrance on either side of the highways ; hedges 

 of rose trees and geraniums guard the orchards of orange and lemon 

 trees, which, bearing both fruit and blossom, make for them a ceaseless 

 round of seed time and harvest, while violets and jessamine are as plenty 

 as dog daisies on a village common. I saw the other day a h%ap of 

 violets which had just been brought to the mill and were on the floor, 

 a pile 20 feet across. They were to be ground up and their fragrance 

 transmitted into the essences and pomades of commerce. 



I visited this winter the gardens of the enthusiastic amateur, Monsieur 

 Doquin, at Cannes, covering near 20 acres. They were filled with all 

 sorts of tropical fruits, growing at all seasons in the open air. He has 

 no plant under glass, yet on my way home I saw plainly, in the near 

 neighborhood, the snow-covered mountains. This, with the fact that 

 Nice is in about the same latitude as Portland, Me., was to me a matter 

 of astonishment, and would afford thought and study for the meteor- 

 ologist. 



