Agricultural Mefeoroloffi/. 
313 
continent of Europe, on which M. Gasp.irin has coloured what 
he conceives to be the regions proper to the successful cultivation 
of certain crops, forming the chief distinguishing features ot Eu- 
ropean husbandry ; and which our countryman, Arthur Young, 
had been tlie first to indicate sixty years ago. Thus, Spain, 
the Mediterranean coasts of France and Italy, Dalmatia, and 
Istria, are marked as proper to the olive, of which he con- 
siders the north of Africa to be the native habitat. — This 
requires two prominent conditions : one, that the winter should 
not on an average be more rigorous than 17"0° Fahr. ; the 
other, that the summer should be sufficient to permit the tree 
to ripen its fruit. The heat is so great, that although corn is 
generally grown throughout these countries, and ripens early in 
the season or before Midsummer, yet the "culture arbiistive" 
is always the chief resource. The climate imposes this law on 
the inhabitants. For though the grains are of good quality, the 
drought is so great, the hardness of the earth comes on so early, 
that the roots of annuals are unable to make their way down 
so as to extract the requisite nutriment; tliose of the shrubby 
plants and trees — olives, vines, figs, mulberries, currants, oranges, 
and almonds, whose alimentary canals penetrate deeper, enable 
them to thrive better than plants deriving their sustenance com- 
paratively from the surface. Indeed, M. Gasparin imagines that 
the olive will, thanks to a more intelligent management, at some' 
future time take the place throughout the south of Europe of all 
other oleaginous, but herbaceous plants. 
The next grand division is that of the vines, which, besides 
being common to all the preceding districts, occupy in addition 
a zone extending in an E.N.E. direction from the mouth of the 
Loire to the north of Dresden. Within portions of this tract the 
summers are still hot enough to ripen maize. For to neither of 
these crops is the severity of the winter season of any conse- 
quence ; but a due amount of summer temperature is indis- 
pensable. The dryness of the summer and the cold of the 
winter are unfavourable to pasturage, and to some extent conse- 
quently to the production of stock ; it is only in those mountainous 
districts which emerge into another climate from the midst of this 
tract that it becomes a branch of industry. 
Northward of this comes the cereal territory — so named by 
M. Gasparin on account of its peculiar, though not exclusive 
aptitude for growing corn. He leaves out, as not hot enough, 
part of the north-western coasts of France ; all Holland ; parts 
of Westphalia and Norway — so that the corn-growing zone 
would form a narrow strip between the vine-growing lands on its 
S.S.E. border, and the pastures and forests on its N.N.W. ; and 
here arises a question interesting to us as Englishmen. 
VOL. ix. Y 
