282 Report on the Dairy-Farming of the North-ioest of France. 
The Northern and North-western departments of France are 
so well known to Englishmen that very little need be said 
about the configuration of the country, but it may be well to 
point out certain variations in the land of the different provinces 
of France included in the sketch-map on the frontispiece. The 
relative agricultural value of the arable land is sufficiently indi- 
cated by the gradations of horizontal shading, from the light 
portions, which show a mean rent to the landlord, whether occu- 
pier or otherwise, of 6s. per acre, to the nearly black portions, 
which command a rent of between 30s. and 50s. per acre, or even 
more, according to situation. Grass-land, vines, and woods are 
indicated by distinctive shadings, as is shown by the index to the 
map. What is known as French Flanders is, for the most part, a 
rich plain, exactly a counterpart in appearance, climate, culture, 
and people, to the region on the other side of the Belgian frontier, 
which has already been described by Dr. Voelcker and myself 
in this Journal.* Artois, Picardy, and the Pays de Caux — 
districts embracing part of the department of the Nord, together 
with the departments of the Pas de Calais, Somme, Aisne, and 
Oise — present the appearance of a rolling plain, chiefly posses- 
sing a rich loamy soil on chalk, with scarcely a fence or a house 
to be seen for miles.f The farmhouses are congregated in 
villages and the farms consist of innumerable strips, often very 
scattered, their boundaries being only discoverable by careful 
search for the landmark, which consists of a fair-sized and some- 
times a large stone, called a "borne." Farther west the character 
of the country changes gradually, and in Western Normandy 
and Brittany, and even in the grass-land districts in the eastern 
portion of those provinces, hills and valleys are more pronounced, 
farmhouses are on the farms, and fences and trees are as abun- 
* Second series, vol. vi. part 1, 1870. 
t Artliur Young tlius describes the soil of Normandy and Flanders : — " This 
noble territory includes the deep, level, and fertile plain of Flanders, and part of 
Artois, tlian which a richer soil can hardly be desired to repay the industry of 
mankind ; two, tliree, and even four feet deep of moist and putrid, but friable 
and mellow loom, more inclining to clay than tand, on a calcareous bottom . . . 
Every step of the way from the very gate of Paris to near Soissons, and thence to 
Cambrai, with but variation of some inferior hills of small extent, is a sandy loam 
of an adniiiablo texture, and commonly of considerable depth. . . . The lino 
through Picardy is inferior, yet for the most part excellent. Put all the arable part 
of Normandy, which is within these limits, is of the same rich friable sandy 
loam, to a great dcjith ; that from Bernay to Elbccnf can scarcely he exceeded; 
four to live feet deep of a reddish-brown loam on chalk txittom, and without a stone. 
As to the pastures of the same province, wc have, I believe, nothing either in 
England or Ireland equal to them : I hold the vale of Limerick to be inferior. 
The famous Pays do Beauce, which I crossed between Arpajon and Orleans, 
resembles the vali-s of Meaux and Senlis ; it is not, however, in general so deep 
as the firmer. The limits I have traced are those of gieat fertility, but, the 
calcareous dihtrict, and even tiiat of chalk, is much more extensive." — ' Travels in 
France,' vol. i., pp. 2S»7, 2D8. 
