20 
Arthur Young. 
drive ; other parties are dressing, by throwing the corn in the 
air for the wind to blow away the chaff. 
In the Gironde he finds oxen ploughing between the rows 
of vines (as is done at this day), and says it was this opera- 
tion which gave Jethro Tull the idea of horse-hoeing corn. 
About Montgeron (Seine-et-Oise) it is all open fields which 
produce corn, and partridges to eat it, for the number is enor- 
mous — on an average a covey of birds to every two acres, and 
more on favourite spots. He visits Madame du Pont, sister to 
the Duchess de Liancourt, and finds, to his surprise, a great 
farmer. “ A French lady young enough to enjoy all the 
pleasures of Paris, living in the country and minding her 
farm, was an unlooked-for spectacle. She has probably more 
lucerne than any other person in Europe— 250 arpents.” 
On October 13 he is in Paris again, and calling on Mr. Cook, 
who is “ there with his drill plough waiting for weather to show 
its performance to the Duke of Orleans ; a French idea improv- 
ing France by drilling.” The finest thing he had yet seen in 
Paris, Young says, is the Halle-aux-Bles — or corn-market. The 
gallery is 150 yards round, the diameter as many feet ; it is 
as light as if suspended by the fairies. In the ground area 
wheat, peas, beans, lentils, are stored and sold. In the surround- 
ing divisions, flour on wooden stands. 
A few days after this he visits Mons. Lomond, who in electricity 
has made a wonderful discovery. “You write two or three 
words on a paper ; he takes it with him into a room and turns a 
machine inclosed in a cylindrical case, at the top of which is an 
electrometer or small, fine pith ball ; a wire connects with a 
similar cylinder and electrometer in a distant apartment ; and 
his wife, by remarking the corresponding motions of the ball, 
writes down the words they indicate, from which, it appears, 
he has formed an alphabet of motions.” The length of the wire 
was found^ to make no difference. At Charenton, near Paris, 
he sees I’Ecole Veterinaire and the farm of the Royal Society of 
Agriculture. At the school there were about 100 eleves from 
different parts of the kingdom, as well as from every country in 
Europe except England-, a strange exception, he remarks, “con- 
sidering how grossly ignorant our farriers are.” He finds the 
farms in a condition he had rather forget than describe. 
The Duke de la Rochefoucauld at his chateau having ordered 
his steward to furnish Young with all the information he needed, 
Young observes that “ at an English nobleman’s there would 
have been three or four farmers asked to meet me, who would 
have dined with the family amongst the ladies of the first rank.” 
Not so in France; and he adds, “The nobility in France have 
