314 
Agricultural Meteorology. 
" Are llie British Islands (asks M. Gasparin) quite out of this cate- 
gory? Witiiout tiie higli price at which their legislation maintains 
corn,* would not tlie breeding- and rearing of cattle be their most pro- 
ductive employment, as it is in Ireland and the highlands of Scotland ? 
It is a question Mhich we should be tempted to answer affirmatively." 
However, M. Gasparin's map, while it abandons all Scotland 
and Ireland to the pasture and forest zone, together with Norway, 
Holland, Denmark, and Sweden, reserves the eastern half of 
England proper among the countries producing corn.t 
Although M. Gasparin's possessions and practice connected him 
with the region of the olive, for he had long observed and occupied 
himself with the industry he has been describing at Orange, in 
the valley of the Rhone, not far from Avignon, yet the cereal 
band is what he terms the classic land of rotations, where forage 
and green crops may be made to alternate with corn. 
We are apt to imagine that the uncertainties of the British 
climate are greater than those attaching to other parts of 
Europe, and that they interfere more seriously with the enter- 
prise of the husbandman, and impede the successful pursuit of 
his profession to a greater degree than the more favoured regions 
of the south, which we fancy to be exempt from those disappoint- 
ing vicissitudes that cloud our northern skies. We gather an 
opposite inference from the perusal of M. Gasparin's lectures; 
all the regularity of rotation and steadiness of routine, in his 
opinion, belong to the northern agriculture — the doubts and risks 
attach on the contrary to those of the hotter south. In the first 
the farmer may translate the lessons of experience into ready- 
made rules of easy exemplification. Every year he may go on 
doing that which he did the season before ; but these methods 
will not apply to the southern districts of Europe, which appear 
to pay dearly at times for their more continual sunshine. 
" The intelligence of the agriculturist must he constantly on the 
alert to repair the damages occasioned by the extremes of heat or M'et ; J 
there where he tiiought to sow pulse he must raise additional forage, 
because the drought has withered up tliose resources on wliich he de- 
* This was written before the repeal of the corn laws. 
t Mr. Wilhams of Pitmaston, in his Essay on Climate, published more 
than forty years ago, observed, wheat was averse to the humid climates. 
He then thought the moisture of our summers was so much on the 
increase, that eventually England, from that cause alone, might cease to 
grow wheat. 
X There is no doubt that a dry climate greatly improves the quality of 
wheat, as increasing the quantity of that gluten on which the real value 
of the flour so much depends. No finer bread can be eaten throughout 
Europe than is made in the Castilles— a central portion of Spain — from 
wheat grown in that region of open land, where ram seldom tails during 
the entire summer. — F. I5urke. 
