men of the Landes breed, smaller still, blackish badger-coloured, with long curled horns, and of most savage aspect. In marked contrast to these types of a race of cattle that may have been driven into Europe before the Celtic hordes of western Asia, stood the most civilized of breeds, the princely Durham, lofty and broad in form, rich in colours of red and white, roan, and that warm lightly flecked hue peculiar to the race, proudly claiming predominance, not as a mere pastoral animal, nor as a labouring one, but as supplying meat to man in the lordly shapes of sirloins and thick ribs of juicy beef. Surely the ox of Durham was bred by the baronial bishops of that city, and stall-fed by the prebend of the cathedral's "golden stall."

We were reminded of the fine cattle in the Flemish part of Pembrokeshire by the similar stocks of Holland and Flanders. The valleys of Switzerland furnished some examples of the best breeds, called Schwitz and Suisse; mouse-coloured grey is their prevailing colour, and some were splendid animals. The race Gruyère, source of the celebrated cheese of this name, is a large red and white breed. Each bull was provided with a bell as big as a dinner one, hung round his neck by a broad ornamented

leather collar.

The show of Espèce Ovine showed 187 samples of superior Merinos and Métis-Merinos, and that of foreign long-woolled breeds included 30 Disbleys, Leicesters, &c., while the number of short-fleeced Southdowns was 77. The prevalent idea as to sheep in France, viz., production of wool, not of mutton, accounts for this disproportion of attention to the Merino variety, which is far inferior to English breeds in the matter of meat. Professing small knowledge of the difference of value of various fleeces, though more knowing than the French gentleman who, on being asked £80 for a ram on account of its fine woolly quality, fancied the seller was trying to fleece him, and protested he cared not if the animal's coat were half cotton, we nevertheless are palpably aware of the soft silky touch of the wool of the Merino sheep in comparison with the Southdown. Numerous samples of wools were shown in the galleries. The south of France is

largely devoted to the growth of fine wool. The migratory flocks on the plains of Arles, at the mouth of the Rhone, sometimes numbering 10,000 to 40,000 sheep, each headed by trained companies of goats with bells round their necks, are driven in spring and autumn a month's journey to the Alps and back to their summer and winter quarters.

Of all the extraordinary animals in this great exhibition was an indigenous ass of Poitou, a colossal donkey, shaggy with long, black, fluffy hair, and a head like a hairy fiddlecase, forming a grotesque caricature of a huge wild ass, and so singular as to have been bought for a fabulously large sum.

The Animaux de Basse-Cour, or what we call poultry, appeared in due glory in this exhibition of a country whose ancient animal emblem was a cock, no less than 830 cages being devoted to specimens of domestic ornithology. The dryness of the climate of France favours poultry-keeping, and the French are great devourers and sellers of eggs. "La poule aux œufs d'or pour aucuns, et la poule au pot pour tout le monde, au moyen d'un poulailler roulant," is the title of an essay that sold largely. The poulailler exhibited was an omnibus, lined with cages, for conveying poultry to railway stations. As usual, the aid of Government is invoked for carrying out the well-known legendary aspiration of Henri Quatre

"La poule au pot! ce vieux cancan, S'allie enfin au poin de seigle; L'œuf issu du coq gallican, Eclôt sous les ailes de l'aigle." French eggs are golden indeed, if the estimate of the yearly home consumption, 227 million of francs, may be relied on; without counting foreign débouchés, of which the English mouth is declared much the widest. Crêvecoeur chickens carried off the palm, and there were astounding instances of cocks and hens from CochinChina, where the French have made great conquests of this gigantic variety of the little feather-footed bantam. "Coq et poules de race de combat" stand in the catalogue, and the male birds maintained such continual challenges to all comers, that these pugnacious bipeds of gallinaceous breed must represent the original Gallic cock. If we may linger longer

in the basse cour, we would not forget the Oie of Strasbourg, to whom the world is indebted for foie gras; nor can we pass over pigeons, suggestive as they are of the feudal age of France, when only a seigneur was entitled to keep them, and when the peasantry round his chateau were obliged to beat the water of its moat by night whenever madame lay in, in order to quiet the frogs.

Apiculture, or the management of the bee, another French emblematic animal, still figuring on imperial trappings, was livelily represented by a colonie d'abeilles liguriennes, who, like their brethren in the London exhibition, carried on their brisk business, regardless of the human crowds around them. Bee industry enters not inconsiderably into the resources of a country whose hot sky and flowery gardens foster the little insect producing wax and honey, specimens of which were largely exhibited.

Before noticing the Algerine animals, let us pass comment on their lord and master, a Moor of Barbary, by nature and art a remarkable specimen of Othello's race. In our archæologic eyes, his virtue lay in his dress, brought in juxta-position, as it was, with the costumes of Breton and Alpine peasants; for the three were similar as to inexpressibles, there being little difference between the petticoat pantaloons of a Zouave, the knickerbockers of a Tyrolese, and the bagging breeches of a Breton. Then all three wore much the same sort of short-sleeved jacket, and were cinctured with sashes : the only marked distinction being that the Frenchman had, in place of turban or of high peaked hat, a broad-leafed slouch black one, with strings for transforming it either into a cocked or a three-cornered hat. There is little to add to what we have already said as to Algerian horned cattle, unless Angora goats may be included in this category, remarkable as they are for their long, soft, silky hair; so let us glance at some vegetable objects.

The Comité Agricole de Rambervillers sent a magnificent exhibition of cereal and other produce, yet was not rewarded with a medal; while a certain farm at Cornation received a gold one for a beggarly show of bags of grain flanked by a couple of cheeses.

The expositions of the committees of Lille and Dunkirk were splendid in samples of corn and flax. The finest animal and vegetable produce comes from those districts, since they form part of the region of rich loam reaching from the Belgian frontier to Caen, Alençon, and Orleans, and bounded on the south-east by the less fertile province of Champagne. This vast tract of loamy soil is the seat of, perhaps, the finest wheat in the world, having the advantage of a thin skin, and containing an unusually large proportion of gluten. Excepting a large strip of land, broad along the southern bank of the Dordogne, including the province of Guyenne, and reaching the centre of the Pyrenees, there are only two other rich loamy districts in France, and they are small, one being Alsace, and the other lying between Nantes and the ocean. Mapped out agriculturally, as was done by Arthur Young, the whole country may be divided into those four pieces of loam: a huge tract of various soils, including Auvergne, and south to the Mediterranean; the chalk soils of Champagne and Poitou; the red rocky region of Lorraine and Franche Comté; the sandy loams of Bourbonnais and Gascony; the flat landes around Bordeaux and elsewhere; and the pastures and heathery wildernesses of Brittany.

Probably the most interesting inanimate object in this show was the grande exposition, occupying a large space, sent by Mons. Léopold Javal, propriétaire exploitant of the estate of Arès, part of the tract of sand and marsh called the Landes de la Gironde. From the catalogue raisonné of this contribution, we extract the following particulars of the exploits of this spirited landlord in improving a hitherto waste and almost hopeless

part of France," for so this desert may be termed; and it seems that the success of his operations has stimulated another proprietor, M. Perreire, who owns some 25,000 acres, to enter on a similar large scale of ameliorative undertakings. The land in question, about 10,000 acres, was once part of the seignory of the Captals de Buch, one of whom figures in the warlike pages of Froissart, and it remained till the last forty years in a state of nature, a mere wretched pasture, where some small flocks and

herds snatched the scanty herbage and passed on over the enormous waste. The few inhabitants of the old seignoral chateau lived almost entirely on the produce of hunting and fishing. How peculiar is the state of the herdsman here was well demonstrated by a wooden effigy, raised on lofty stilts, of a berger, or gardeur de bestiaux, whose function requires that he be raised on high, so as to obtain a view of the wide expanse over which his four-footed charges are wandering. Armed with a rude firelock, and provided with a gourd full of water, he stalks along, his stilts strapped over shaggy galligaskins of black sheep-skin, and his body clothed in a sleeveless coat of white ditto, the woolly side out. A more outlandish figure can hardly be conceived. In 1835, the estate came into the hands of a naval officer, who converted a piece of marsh on the Arcachon side of the estuary into a reservoir for sea-fish, which has been so much enlarged by the present proprietor as to be able to keep and send a continual supply to the Bordeaux market. It is quite possible that similar little canals, cut in some suitable spots around the Irish shores, would be available as reserves of fish in a state fresh for sale.

M. Javal began, in 1847, a vigorous course of drainage of the marshes, of formation and cultivation of fields, and of planting about 7,000 acres with plants and seeds of the maritime pine, from which the following results have already been partially obtained. This species of pine grows rapidly; specimens fifteen years old were twenty-five feet high; the first produce of this forest will, therefore, be resinous, both in its raw form and as essence of térébenthine, &c. After the young pines had provided shelter enough, other sorts of trees were planted, such as white and black oak, mulberry, acacia, poplar, chêne liége, or cork-barked oak, bourdène, for making gunpowder charcoal, and other arbustes, or shrubs adapted to the soil, but the virtues of which we will not trouble our readers with, since"

non omnes arbusta juvant.' Four tall pines were exhibited, to show the mode of taking resin, which drops as gemmes from the scarified bark into earthen vessels.

The effects of this planting on an

extensive scale are good in the present and promising for the future. First, the blow-away sand is set at rest; and, secondly, the ocean is prevented from continuing its inroads on the shore; moreover, the absorption caused by the tree roots gradually dries the marshy land, so that the herbage improves and can be depastured. Meanwhile, small portions of land are brought into cultivation, so that, though when the estate was purchased, only twenty-five acres were arable, it now produces many roots, grain, vegetables, and some wine; and the owner calculates that after having cut down the forest, much of its site will be fit for cultivation. Well has he earned the large gold medal just awarded him!

Viniculture sent samples of produce from Bordeaux, Champagne, and Burgundy; and there was even a model of a little vineyard, showing the manner in which vines can be protected from frost by earthing and matting. Fond tradition attributes the introduction of the vine into Gaul to the mythic hero Brennus, i.e., the Breton, whom the poet Béranger makes say in one of his songs:

"Les champs de Rome ont payé mes exploits;

Et j'en rapporte un cep de vigne." Quitting legend for truth, we repeat the well-known fact, that the most favourable situation for a vineyard facing the south-east; or, as the Latin is an open one upon rising ground poet briefly expresses it:

Bacchus amat colles ;"

apertos

a predilection evidenced in a map of the vineyards which produce the finest wines of Burgundy, classed in three qualities according to the merit of their products, each enclosure being coloured according to its quality. Thus, in the first rank appears the renowned Clos de Vougeot, a small enclosure near the village of this name, not far from the town of Nuits. The judgment which determined the comparative merits of these three classes of cuvies, or brewings, has been fully accepted; and it indicates, as the cause of the differences, the higher, middle, or lower situation of each vineyard on the declivities of the range of hills which form, to the north, the valley producing the best

tion of disinfection of towns by utilizing their sewerage. Artificial manure being to home-made what credit is compared to capital, is to be considered only as a means to the full end of possessing a sufficient home-supplied quantity, and should therefore be chiefly employed in stimulating those growths which are consumed by cattle in the farmstead, according to the apothegm enunciated by the great agricultural chemist, Liebig, that: There is but one manure which maintains the fertility of a field in a durable manner, namely, stabledung; and since the need of the times compels agriculture to find means capable of entirely replacing it in its action, it is necessary to arrive at success in such substitution, to replace all its component principles."

Good and large slates being scarce and very dear in France, the manufacture of roofing tiles forms a staple trade throughout the country; and, as every traveller has observed, oak is a material frequently employed. Burnt clay, however, being in more general use, the pleasing colours of red, weather-stained tiles impart that warm and agreeable look to French villages which is wanting wherever slate, as in our country, coldly tints the landPaper substances prepared scape. with bitumen are of rare use. There is at Clichy a large factory of this material, the cheapness, impermeability, and lightness of which recommend it for adoption under certain circumstances. The manufacture of tiles, whether for roofs or for floors, may well flourish in a country whose Emperor dwells in the Tuileries palace, so called from occupying the site of an ancient tilery. Besides that, as every traveller knows, red clay tiles prevail in the roofs throughout France, he also will have not failed to observe that even many bed-rooms in the capital itself are paved with the common sexagonal tiles of the country. More than one exhibitor showed patterns of new and elegant forms of roofing tiles, one of which struck us as peculiarly simple and light, at the low cost of 1fr. 47c. the square metre; and another style, handsomer in pattern, was offered at 1fr. 45c., and is remarkable for its ingenious contrivance for excluding rain. There were also some interesting specimens of attempts at ornamented mosaic paving

tiles, in imitation of various marbles. In our own country, where the humidity of the climate prohibits exposure of either brick or stone as outer walls of houses unprotected by a coat of cement, builders are often perplexed by the difficulty of giving them some tint that shall please the eye; so we do well to notice a ferruginous aluminous composition invented for tincturing plaster, and which, rich in colour, and giving the walls of a house the appearance of brick, may be recommended to all who dislike white, yellow, and dull hues.

Draining pipe tiles, indispensable for perfect drainage, made in some parts of France, under the difficulty of want of coal, are burnt by means of wood; just as much iron ore is also submitted to the same process. The following tariff shows how expensive all furnace processes with wood must be, as well as the cost of draining with wood-burnt tiles:

The value of the use of these and other instruments for relieving the soil from superfluous moisture is enforced by a brochure freely circulated by M. Aboilard, containing several reports of the results obtained on drained lands, which, since our own country suffers most severely for want of more extended operations of this nature, well deserve attention. Briefly, the good effects are, facility in working heavy land, increase of results from manures,-which, whether in the form of lime or of farm composts, hitherto were weakened by wet,-and consequently a much larger produce, especially of roots.

Tubes we saw, for various uses, whether agricultural, as for conveying liquid manure, and for irrigation; some formed of bitumenized paper; and a flexible variety, called tubes halter. Also we must chronicle an admirable "boiler," if this term is applicable to a huge iron vessel for cooking corn and vegetables by means of hot air. This Cérèsienne boasts that