mense expence, to keep the entrance open; the sea visibly retires, and if the clearing of the harbour were neglected for a few years, Barcelona would soon be at a distance fron the shore.

This city is well fortified, and has for its defence a magnificent rampart, a citadel, and the castle of Mont-Joui; but Barcelona is too extensive to be easily guarded and defended; on which account it has always been taken when attacked, and the rebellious disposition of the inhabitants severely checked. It is no uncommon thing to hear the Catalonians say, the king of Spain is not their sovereign, and that in Catalonia, his only title is that of count of Barcelona.

Barcelona contains several fine edifices; that called the Tersana, or the arsenal, is of a vast extent, and in every respect worthy of 'attention. A prodigious gallery, containing twenty-eight forges, has lately been erected in it: the numerous workmen continually employed, the noise of the hammers, the red hot iron piled up, and the flame which on every side seems to envelop the building, form a wonderful and an interesting scene. The cathedral of Barcelona is very ancient; the roof is extremely lofty, and supported by a great number of columns which have a good effect; the inside is spacious but gloomy; the entrance is by twenty steps, each the whole length of the front.

The palace of audience is a magnificent edifice; the architecture is equally noble and elegant the inside is ornamented with marble columns, and in a great hall are placed the portraits of all the, ancient counts of Barcelona...

The Exchange is opposite the governor's palace, and one of the finest monuments in the city; some of the halls or chambers are occupied by the Junto of Commerce, and others serve for drawing schools like those of Paris, where the art of drawing is taught gratie. They were founded by the company of merchants for the improvement of arts and trades, and already contain eight hundred students. A collection is making of the best models in plaister of the finest pieces of antiquity,

Although Barcelona be so extensive, yet it is not the metropolis of Catalonia; that honour belongs to Tarragona, which disputes with Toledo the primacy of Spain. The establishment of the see is said to have been in the first ages of the church; the succession of archbishop was interrupted by the Moors, and remained suspended until the eleventh century. The cathedral is worthy of attention for its vast dimensions, the elegance of its gothic architecture, and a magnificent chapel, "built with rich marbles and jasper.

Compare Panorama, Vol. IV. p. 867.

PROGRESS OF AGRICULTURE AND HOT CULTURE IN FRANCE.

[Extracted from the French.] Notwithstanding the political errors of t French government, agriculture in Fran during the 16th century, felt that impo which sciences and letters experienent throughout Europe. In 1535, Charles Etienne published a work on gardening; he succes sively published others, on the sowing and planting of forest trees, on the culture of the vine, on meadows, on forests, &c. In 1565 he published his Agriculture and Maison Rustique. Of this work no less than thir editions were printed. It was considerabi augmented in that of 1570, by his son-in-bas Jean Liebault; nevertheless, it is nothing better than an undigested compilation from the ancients, replete with absurdities. Hen can we believe, for instance, even on Varro authority, that goats are constantly in a stav of fever; that the best manner of cooking eggs is to whirl them round in a sling; thi the surest way of freeing of cabbages from caterpillars, is for a woman to walk in the plantation bare-footed, with her hair disheve led, &c. Those errors have existed for co turies; we find them in Columella, and a Palladius. Remedies to cure oxen from us effects of witchcraft are included; and in th chapter, on the diseases of fowls, we r told, that when hens have got a cold the must be washed in warm water, that whe they have sore eyes, the eyes must be meis with woman's milk; and a thousand sut

absurdities.

According to Plutarch, an Etrurian exilet from his country, and wishing to return as a conqueror, prevailed on the Gauls to follow him as their leader, and in order to ge them a favourable idea of its productions, be set before them the wine of his country. Ac cording to Pliny, an Helvetian, having spent some years in Rome, first thought that to car ry wines from Italy to Gaul might prove s advantageous speculation. However that were we find, that in Strabo's time, twenty-eight rears after the Christian æra, vines were cut tivated on the southern coasts of France, al though, according to the same writer, graps ripened with difficulty north of the Cevennes Soon after, the country being cleared of it woods became drier, and the culture of the vine advanced so rapidly northward that sever or eight centuries afterwards it was established in countries, where it is now no longer culti vated; such as the Pays de Caur (in Ne mandy) the neighbourhood of Caen, the Bec, Lumiège, Corbie, Artois, and Belga

Still, however, vines are found in the vicinity of Cologne, and in the most northern depart ment of France, that of Roer, the vineyard

which before his communication had been considered as a secret. Great medicinal properties were ascribed to that rectification of wine by means of distillation; but, soon afterwards, brandy ceased to be considered in France as a medicine, and was regarded as a very pleasant drink. In 1646 was published a Traité de l'Eau de Vie, or Anatomie théo- | rique et pratique du Vin. We find in Helyot, that an order of monks, founded by Saint John of Sienna, suppressed in 1668 by Clement IX, who first assumed the name of "Jesuits," employed themselves, not only in preparing medicaments for the poor, but also in distilling brandy, whence they got the nickname, of Gli padri dell acqua-vita. But the epoch when the extraction of brandy from the residue of wine was first practised, is of a more recent date. Durival, I know not on what grounds, fixes the epoch of that discovery to the year 1696. Various other substances have been employed for the same purpose, such as cherries, plumbs, elderberries, potatoes, &c. The Swiss have been long in the habit of extracting from the blackberry, aliquor that they highly praise.

According to Pliny and other writers, cider was known to the ancients. It is said, however, that it was unknown both in France and in England, till within these three centuries. This liquor was first made in Africa, and the people of Biscay, who trade with those parts, first introduced the use of it in their country. Afterwards, the Normans having : conquered Neustria, to which they gave their name, and trading with the people of Biscay, learned from them the manner of making cider. Olivier de Serres says, that in the Cotentin (a district of Normandy) a kind of red cider is made from blood-coloured apples, called scarlet apples, and that this liquor, with the addition of sugar and cinnamon, will keep two years. The poet, St. Amand, a strenuous advocate for cider, not satisfied in a poem in its praise to extol it above wine, maintains that cider is the aurum potabile, the grand desideratum of alchyny!!

Perry originated in Normandy; it is made of sour and sweet pears, in the same way as cider is made froin apples. Fortunatus, in his life of Sainte Radegonde, queen of France, who when a widow led a most penitent life. says, that this princess used to drink nothing but water and perry, which was a drink of the poor.

Prunelet, a drink made with water and sloe berries, was used by the Parisians in 1420, a year of great scarcity:

Warm drinks, so generally prevailing now in Europe, were not known in the sixteenth century. Ellis, in his treatise on coffee, says, that in 1555, the decoction from that berry was already used in Turkey. The Mahome medan preachers inveighed against it from the pulpit. One muphti declared that the lovers

of coffee were the enemies of Mahomet : A successor to that muphti decided the contrary. Coffee was not introduced in France till 1644, by travellers, from Marseilles; and Galiand relates, that Thevenot, on his return from the east in 1658, was fond of that drink, and used to treat his friends with it. In 1669 Soloman Aga, ambassador from the Porte at the court of Louis XIV, whe remained a year in Paris, first spread the use of coffee; and in 1072 an Armenian named Paschal, opened a shop in the fair of St. Germain, where he sold coffee publicly. After the fair, he established himself on the quay de l'Ecole, at the corner of Rue de la Monnoie, where a coffee-house is still existing. This was the first in Paris; the price of a cup of coffee was two sous six deniers (a penny farthing, but from the then value of money more than double the present currency).

We received chocolate from America, towards 1661; we are indebted to the Spaniards for it, and it was Maria Theresa of Austria, queen of Louis XIV, who established the use of it in France. The introduction of tea, from China and Japan, dates from 1636. We are indebted for it to the Dutch, and the use of that leaf has become so general, that in some countries, such as Holland and England, to breakfast means, exclusively, to drink tea, and eat bread and butter.

a

The lupin, so celebrated by the ancients as food, still keeps its place on the dining-table, in Spain, in Corsica, and elsewhere. The Chinese eat the larva of the brown chaffer (hanneton) and the Sardinians find no fault with the meat of a young horse. The Romans being great lovers of snails, had places on purpose to fatten them; and this is still the practice in Lorraine, and in the ci-devant electorate of Treves. These places, which are common enough, are called Escargotières (from the French name of the snail, escargot) they consist of a stony piece of ground, covered with moss, and surrounded by a wall; the top is covered with iron wire, the points fixed downwards, to prevent those creatures from escaping. La Bruyere-Champier mentions the snail as a food. Quantities of snails are sometimes sent as per invoice to the colonies; they are caten in Spain, and in Germany; but are little used in Paris. In a work printed at Paris in 1692 under the title of Maison Reglet, by Audiger, find that in those times, the annual expense of living to a rich man, keeping every day an open table, dinner and supper, for twelve people, did not exceed 11,900 livres.

In the sixteenth century, also, our northern countries acquired several kinds of fishes; and among them the carp, indigenous to the south of Europe. The carp has since been intro

duced into Sweden, and into Holland; in 1514 Mascal brought it to England, and towards the year 1560 Peter Oxe introduced it into Denmark. Le Grand d'Aussi attempts to prove, that the French formerly fed on whale; he does not, however, quote the Histoire du Siège de Metz by Ambroise Paré, where he would have found an additional proof of that fact. In Japan the poor feed mostly on the flesh of whales; and the inhabitants of the Ferro islands have hardly any other food.

The use of the flesh of asses as food, introduced by Maecenas, was renewed by the chancellor Duprat. At the same epoch the tops of mallows, hop-vines, and of some other plants, were eaten in sallad. The hop vine is still used as such in Belgia. But a remarkable circumstance is, that in those times all culinary seeds were malted before they were cooked.

It appears by the regulations of Saint Chrodegand, ordained bishop of Metz in 743 by Pope Stephen, that the acorn was still used as food for man. In proportion as the soil was brought into cultivation, man drew his food from grain and graminous plants; and had recourse to acorns only in times of scarcity, as was the case in Le Mans, in 1548. In Provence, according to Quiqueran, wheat was the only grain ever used as food; he adds, that even in years of scarcity, dogs would not feed on oaten bread. The Norwegians are very fond of oaten bread. Poucelet mentions his having tasted some which he preferred to any other. Every one knows that oats make excellent gruel. La Framboisière, physician to Henry IV, praised husked barley (commonly called French barley or pearl barley). Much of it is used in the eastern departments of France; whereas, in Paris, that cheap and wholesome food is almost unknown. Many writers think that the fail for thrashing corn is a modern invention; although plain common sense would have suggested that very simple method. The ancients had hand and watermills. A Bohemian writer has maintained, that windmills were known in this country twelve centuries ago. But we incline to think, that they have been introduced into Europe much more lately; they were unknown till the return of the Crusaders from their expedition to the east, and we borrowed that invention, as likewise many others, from the Saracens, to whom we are also indebted for several new modes of agriculture, and for several vegetables brought from their country. In 1720 attempts were made to apply windmills to agriculture; these attempts have been lately renewed, but without success. The Dutch are the only people who have been fully sensible of the advantages to be derived from the use of these mills. In the neighbourhood of Saardam no less than

800 windmills are reckoned, on a superficies of two square leagues.

We are indebted to chance for the very nseful discovery of leaven. The Gauls, according to Pliny, employed yeast. It fell into disuse for several centuries, and till the beginning of the seventeenth, when much use was made of a kind of cake bread which could not be leavened easily, on account of the heterogeneous substances mixed with it, a more powerful ferment became necessary, and yeast was again employed. But doctors disagreed as to its good or bad properties; they seized their pens, abuse was poured forth on both sides, and in 1670 the case was still undecided. In La Bruyere-Champier's time a kind of spirituous water was employed to leaven the bread, which besides was salted.

Rye, known to the ancients, formed in the sixteenth century a considerable branch of agriculture. Experience had taught, that it was better adapted than wheat to sandy grounds.

Several varieties of wheat were successively brought into notice. In 1598, Olivier de Serres cultivated in his garden the Smyrna, or miraculous wheat, with several branching ears: the produce was forty for one.

Pierre de Crescens, who lived in the thirteenth century, does not notice Turkey wheat (hlé Sarrazin); his silence may induce belief that it was then unknown. But it was cultivated in England in 1517, and in Belgia, in 1661; we presume that France received it from the Moors, or Saracens of Spain, to whom we are likewise indebted for the Indian corn (in French blé d'Espagne, or, ble de Turquie, indifferently).

Some people maintain that we are also indebted to the Moors for saffron, which others affirm, was brought to us from the Levant by a pilgrim. Latailler des Essarts pretends, that the first bulbous roots of saffron were brought into Gatinois (a province of France) towards the end of the fourteenth century; and that till the beginning of the seventeenth, saffron, to the value of upwards of 300,000 livres, was annually sold to the Dutch and Germans. France, in the oxteenth century, consumed much more saffron for culinary purposes than at present, and the culture of that vegetable was, accordingly, much more extensive it prevailed most in Provence, Albigeois, and Angoumois; Gatinois is now the only province where it is still cultivated.

In 1551 the inhabitants of Provence tried the culture of the sugar cane, indigenous to the East Indies, and that of rice, indigenous to the East likewise; these attempts, as to rice, have been several times repeated, and soine very lately; but they have not been attended with much success, either in Provence, or in Lyonnais; it was even thought necessary

to fix by ordinances the quantity of ground each township or village might allot to that culture, which is now totally abandoned, although it was attended with tolerable profit. Rice requires stagnant waters; and it is probable that these occasioned fevers, and the dread of such diseases has justly caused the culture of rice to be abandoned in France, although it be so successful in Piedmont.

We are indebted for melous to the conquests of Charles VIII, who brought them from Italy; they soon became common in France, and in 1586 Jacques de Pont wrote a treatise on melons; he thinks, they were first brought from Africa into Spain, and Italy. Olivier de Serres advises glass bells, to hasten their maturity, which seems to shew that they were not in general use. Languedoc was then famous for its melons; those of Metz and of Vic, so celebrated since, were not yet brought into notice. The Cantaloup melon is indigenous to Armenia.

To Italy we are also indebted for that kind of cucumber called serpentine; Toulouse is the first town where it was cultivated. Olivier de Serres pretends, that we procured the pumpkin from Naples, and from Spain; from this last country we also learned the use of truffles.

For the spinach, indigenous in Lesser Asia, we are indebted to the Arabians; some writers think it might be the chysolaca of the Greeks; La Bruyere-Champier affirms, that this plant, which is no favourite with him, was for many centuries greatly in use, both in Paris and in Lyons, and that it was brought into notice merely as an early vegetable, useful during the long abstinence of Lent. Artichokes, which were scarce in Pliny's time, seem indigenous in Andalusia; they were afterwards forgotten, and in 1473 they appeared in Venice as a novelty. Towards the year 1466, they were brought to Naples and Florence, from whence they were introduced into France, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and in England under the reign of Henry VIII. I must remark, that the artichoke belonging to the genus of thistles, this circumstance explains in what sense ancient writers have said, that thistles were eaten by the French; every one knows to what animal that kind of food seems reserved. Large beans, and even kidney beans, were very anciently known in Gaul, and the dwarf pea has been introduced into it a considerable time ago; but, the use of graen peas, and the whim of paying extravagant prices for the early ones, are known only within these hundred and fifty years.

The green cabbage now so common in France, was brought into Gaul by the Romans; likewise the red cabbage, so esteemed and even worshipped by the Egyptians, and considered by the Greeks as the most whole

some food. But, white cabbages come from northern countries, and the way to obtain large heads was unknown under Charlemagne. Olivier de Serres says, that in his time the green winter cabbage degenerated, and that it was necessary to get fresh seed every year from Tortosa, Savona, and Briançon. Towards the end of the sixteenth century borecoles or small green cabbages, were brought to France from Italy. Cauliflowers were brought from the Levant to Italy, and from thence were carried into France and Germany. common lettuce is very ancient in Gaul; the cos-lettuce, (in French laitue Romaine) comes from the vicinity of Rome, and was brought to France by Rabelais, the learned curate of Meudon

The

The manner in which flowers of certain species were introduced into Europe, may properly be noticed here. The tulip, indigenous to Cappadocia, was brought to Europe in 1559, and Conrad Gesner saw it in Augsburgh, about that time. We owe the tuberose to a monk, whom the learned Peirese had sent to Persia. Roses are indigenous to the Mediterranean islands; I have read, I do not recollect where, that formerly the cultivation of roses was not free, but was the object of an exclusive privilege. To the discovery of America, Europe is indebted for the grenadine, indigenous to Peru, and to Mexico; and which was first presented to Pope Paul V. The nasturtium was likewise brought from Peru, the dionea from Mexico; the same country sent us the honey-suckle, the night beauty, the vanilla, the vervain, asteria, &c. The heliotrope was found in the vallies of the Cordilleras in Peru, by M. Jussieu, and the sensitive plant comes from Brazil. We are indebted to Asia for the myrtle, and for the lily, indigenous to Palestine. The Persian lilac, was brought by Busbec from lesser Asia; the China-aster by Father d'Incarville a Jesuit; the jasmine comes from the coast of Malabar; the agathis and hyacinth from India; the balsam from Arabia, and the hortensia from China. The discovery of the Cape of Good Ilope, gave us the althea, the geranium, &c.

Britain was very seldom before France in the reception of esculents, or vegetable exotics, till her immense traffic by sea with foreign parts, enabled her to anticipate her rival in this career: and of late years we have seen her diligence rewarded by the acquisition of almost innumerable novelties and curiosities. The British possessions in India have contributed an ample share of interesting articles: and his present majesty has greatly increased the ornaments of our gardens by sending to Africa, and elsewhere, at his private expense, botanists property qualified to select specimens. The public procuration of plants, the bread fruit, spices, &c. must also be recollected.