208 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



answers for a channel to conduct the water in the process of irri- 

 gation which finds so much favor in Parma and the environs of 

 Mantua. 



Trenching is resorted to by some Italian fai'mers, particularly 

 w^here spade husbandry is all in vogue. This mode of mingling 

 the soil is quite simple. The way to effect it is to sink the spade 

 below the earth about twice the depth of ordinary plowing. 

 The salts which have sunk under the surface are brought up, and 

 by a fine mixture of the new soil the plant obtains fresh food to 

 sustain its wants; besides it remains mellow and friable for 

 years when the operation has been effected with skill and proper 

 attention. This mechanical mixture of the soil, though on a 

 small scale, is but another substitute for the subsoil plow, one 

 of the most useful labor-saving instruments brought into use by 

 modern agriculture, but, alas, no where to be found in Italy. 



Thus, reader, you see the Tuscan peasant bring about with a 

 spade, on his scanty acres, what is in your power to accomplish 

 at a much cheaper rate by horse power and agricultural ma- 

 chinery. It is only where labor receives its lowest reward that 

 the spade can supersede the plow. For example, in South Italy, 

 where the male day laborer gets, in harvest, about fifteen cents 

 for twelve hours toil in a broiling sun, and female, for the same, 

 has five cents less. 



A crowded population and a minute division of the land 

 among the tenants have made the spade emphatically, in the Nea- 

 politan dominions, a substitute for the plow. It must be borne 

 in mind that, with the exception of the ecclesiastical estates, the 

 Metayer system everywhere prevails in Italy. Tlie usual quan- 

 tity of land cultivated by each tenant is from four to ten acres. 

 It may be safe to put the average at five. Such is the pressure 

 of taxation in an over populated farming community, that the 

 laborer seldom gets meat except on Sunday or festival occasions. 

 Indeed, it barely supports life, beset with discomforts and squal- 

 idness, and dwarfs the rising generation into a stunted being 

 without bloom and intelligence. 



Primogeniture is as much an object of ambition among the 

 Italian peasants as it was witli the ancient Hel^rews. The tenant 

 of a lonely casale, though a dirty hovel, if he is the eldest son, 

 he alone marries, and when the father dies he is the sole heir to 

 the inheritance. All his l)rothers and sisters are bound to single 

 life, and serve him with the like fidelit}'' as they did their fiither. 

 But this unnatural state of the domestic circle, is the hot-bed 



