Agricultural Meteorology. 
315 
pendwl for feeding his cattle. Sometimes tlie over-abundance of hay- 
will permit him to increase their immbers, at otiier times he must 
hasten to get rid of them, because his grass-crops liuve failed. Some 
seasons lie will have an ample supply of manures, in otliers lie will be 
short of them ; one year he must hold back his wheat, because a plen- 
tiful harvest will have reduced its price ; the next, tiie drought in the 
spring will liave produced a scarcity, and he must plougii up his 
pastures in order to supply grain for his family ; a set rule would be 
his ruin ; notliing but an irregularity in accordance with that of nature 
and the seasons will save him from losses." 
But in the region of the cereals, extremes and accidents are 
rare. 
" From the spring being so much later, we reach the summer solstice 
when the season is most regular, the weather the most settled of the 
whole j^ear, just at the moment when all vegetation is most fully deve- 
loping itself. 
" The necessary complement of labourers, stock, and capital can be 
determined upon beforehand. The produce is in proportion to the 
consumption, and all irregularity of culture is punished, because it 
finds no compensation in any corresponding irregularity of season. It 
has produced that steady rotation of crops according to formulas 
which please the mind by their continual recurrence and their almost 
certain returns ; it is an agriculture from which other regions may 
usefully borrow partial information, but which cannot, as a whole, be 
transplanted elsewhere. In the hotter and more uncertain climates, 
far greater firmness and forethought are required on the part of the 
tenant to reimburse himself by good returns for the deficiency of his 
bad ones, so that he may not be alarmed at the frequent or certain re- 
currence of the last. He must have more than all these, he must have 
a capital sufficient to withstand the reverses which may happen at the 
beginning of his lease. These contingencies, which render farming 
conditions so difficult in the districts of the olives and the vines, 
scarcely exist in tiie corn cultivation, and not at all in the pastoral 
countries — the most ordinary understanding is there competent to carry 
on a farm."* 
Cider and beer there take the place of wine ; the land opened 
in the spring can be ploughed throughout the summer. 
" Tiiis regular order of the climate, and of the operations of agri- 
culture, react favourably on the popidations so employed ; they are the 
most peaceable, moral, and well-instructed in Europe." 
These observations show that if each great division of the 
earth's surface has received what appear at first sight to be pecu- 
liar advantages, they are for the most part modified by such cir- 
cumstances as re-establish something like an equality of condition 
* It is so in the British islands generally ; the dairy farmer is lowest in 
the scale of enterprise, while the hop cultivation, which is subject to greater 
contingencies, and gives perhaps in a good year the highest returns, 
requires also the greatest capital, skill, and experience. 
Y 2 
