THE GAME OF FRANCE. 
29 
numberless streams, to magnificent rivers, which, slowly descend- 
ing the gentle slope of their beds, water and fertilize the valleys, 
anastomose or run parallel with each other, binding, by natural 
communications, all parts of the territory, and facilitating the ex- 
change of all the products of the soil between the inhabitants of 
different zones. For there are truly three zones in this little 
France, which the black swallow traverses in five hours through 
its whole extent. There is the tropical zone, where the orange 
and pomegranate ripen in the open air, where all the flowers of 
the tropics flourish in the breezes of the south — the zone of the 
Mediterranean shore, the basins of the Var and Tech, where frosts 
are still unknown, where the clear air has the azured tint of the 
Sicilian Heaven, and distributes with as constant a prodigality 
splendid days and starry nights. There is the middle zone, where 
the vine, the mulberry, maize, and other cereal grains grow ; then, 
lastly, the northern zone, where the grape no longer matures, but 
where the apple and the hop still yield their harvest, so that each 
division of this blessed land should have its exhilarating liquor. 
Sometimes the productions of the three zones will meet under the 
same eye, and rise above each other in grades from the base to 
the summit of the same mountain, on the shores of the blue sea : 
below, the olive and the cork-tree ; a little higher, the mulberry, 
the walnut, and the oak ; then the chestnut tree ; then the ash ; 
then the hemlock ; then shrubs, with dark and glistening leaves, 
bordering the region of eternal snows, where the soil no longer 
lives. At the base of the mountain the ortolan, the little bustard, 
the quail ; higher up, the gray partridge, the thrush, the snipe ; 
still higher, the red partridge, the grouse ; then still ascending, the 
Guernsey partridge, th^ heath-cock, the hazel-hen ; finally, on the 
limits of the region of snows, the ptarmigan, compatriot of the 
eagle, the wild goat, and chamois. 
The ancients forgot to place the garden of the Hesperides in 
one of those oases of the south of France, where the tree with 
golden apples grows, and which Esculapius now assigns as a dwell- 
ing to weak chests and to exhausted constitutions. Modern poets 
have repaired the omission of the poets of the Greek mythology : 
Si vellet Deus in terris habitare, Biterris,” they say. There is, 
