4138 FRANCE.

principally cultivated by small proprietors; who are extremely poor, and almost all involved in debt to the capitalists of the city, who take from them their wine, brandy, and vinegar, as soon as itis made. Some few ofthe vineyards are cultivated by the capitalists; but one of the number, who was my companion over this part of the country, assured me that he could buy the productions much cheaper than he or any man could grow them. Brandy especially, he said, was so low, that it scarcely paid more than the cost of gathering the grapes, expressing and distilling them. The soil on the sides of these hills is a light sand, very shallow, and resting on a bed of soft lime-stone, very friable when first disclosed, but gradually hardening by exposure to the atmosphere.

After two hours tedious ascent, we reached the level plain above. The soil is a very tenacious clay, of a dark yellow colour, inclining to red, with a quantity of large surface stones, equal to any thing exhibited on the Kent and Surrey hills. This land bears most excellent wheat. The usual course is a clean fallow one year, during which it is ploughed from three to five times, according to the season. Wheat is then sown. It is followed by barley or oats, and with that trefoil seed is sown; the hay made from which, the next summer, forms the third crop in the four years. The increase of grain is usually from seven to eight for one. The ploughs used in this district resemble the Kentish turn-wrest plough, in having the prin- cipal draft from the centre of the beam, and thus preventing the share from being thrown out of the furrow, when it en- counters one of the large stones imbedded in the tenacious clay. It differs from that description of plough in not shifting the wrest, which serves as a mould board at every turning. The depth of the ploughing is regulated by the end of the beam