544 
Rural Economi/ of France since 1789. 
more than 4,000,000/. sterling-. Since that year, a mysterious 
disease has considerably lessened that amount, and, although 
the price of raw silk has risen in consequence, the yearly loss 
to mulberry growers cannot be less than two millions sterling. 
Besides the mulberry-tree, this region boasts of the olive-tree 
and the madder, which can only flourish in the warm c:limate of 
the south. In some favoured spots — in sheltered valleys, for 
instance, enjoying the double advantage of a hot atmosphere and 
a plentiful supply of moisture — the soil is so fertile. Nature so 
bountiful, that several crops are gathered every year. It is not 
rare to see in the same field mulberry-trees cultivated, around 
whose lower branches the vine entwines its richly-laden boughs, 
whilst beneath this luxuriant canopy heavy crops of wheat, roots, 
vegetables, madder, tobacco, (Sec, are gathered in endless suc- 
cession. 
Farther south comes Provence, with its tropical climate, where 
palm and orange trees grow in the open-air, and spring seems per- 
petual, especially in the department of Var. There, in a south- 
westerly direction, we meet the rich plains of Nismes, Montpelier, 
Narbonne, and Beziers, no less interesting to the agriculturist 
than to the antiquary and the artist. But if the southern portion 
of the South-Eastern Division of France is so remarkable for the 
advantages it derives from its climate, it has also to contend with 
its deadliest foe — water. A vast extent of territory is completely 
sterile and desert-like for want of it, and another part is periodi- 
cally ruined by the devastation of mountain-torrents, which 
denude vast tracts of land of their vegetable soil, and sometimes 
transform luxuriant valleys into bleak and desolate solitudes. All 
travellers to Marseilles have remarked, after passing the old Roman 
city of Aries, the barren desert called La Crau, consisting of 
30,000 acres, where there is to be found neither a bush nor a 
house, nor a blade of grass, except in winter, when half a million 
sheep, descending from their summer pastures on the slopes of 
the Alps, come to be fed upon a tiny grass that grows under 
the stones which cover this dreary waste. Out of 8,750,000 
acres comprised in the four departments into which Provence is 
now divided, there are only 2,000,000 under cultivation; 1,200,000 
are in woods, 500,000 in natural grazing-Iand, and the rest is a 
wilderness, the desolation of which cannot be exceeded. 
5. — South-Western Division. 
We leave the snowy peaks of the Alps and the blue waters of 
the Mediterranean, and we now perceive on our left the lofty 
summits of the Pyrenees, and in the extreme west the waves 
of the Atlantic Ocean. Two-thirds of this division consist of 
