young's TRAVELS IN FRANCE.

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but once for rice. The peafants are unhealthy from the culture, yet their pay notmore than 24 f to 30/. a day. The foil of the rice-grounds here is that of a fine loamyturnip fand; there is a mound raifed around them, for the convenience of floodingat will.

Vercelli. — Rice is here reckoned the molt profitable of all the cultivation of Pied-mont ; for it yields a greater value than wheat, and at a lefs expence. It demands onlyone ploughing, inftead of feveral. Seed only four mine, at 1 livre. Watering at2 livres $f. Cutting, the end of July, 1 o f The product is fixty mine rough, ortwenty-one white; the latter at 4 livres, or 84 livres ; and four mine of a fort of bran,at 1 cff. or 3 livres, in all 87 livres (fomething under 5I. an acre). It is fown threeyears in fucceflion, and the fourth a fallow, during which the land is dunged. Theprice of thefe lands 500 livres or 600 livres the giornata. As rice can be fown only onland that admits watering at pleafure, I do not fully comprehend this account. Why,for infiance, is not the land laid down for meadow, which evidently pays much better,and fells at a higher price ? I fuppofe rice is ready money on demand, and meadowsmu ft be converted to calh circuitoufly. Good wheat land fells at 800 livres.

To Novara. —Palling the Sefia, which exhibits a bed of five times as much gravel aswater, in three or four miles the quantity of rice is confiderable: the ftubble is green,and in wet mud; the fheaves thin. It extends on both fides the road for fome diltance;the whole inclofed by ditches, and rows of willow poplar pollards, as bad to the eye as itcan be to the health. One or two fields are not yet cut; it looks like a good crop ofbarley, being bearded. After Novara, fee no more of it.

Milanese. — Milan to Pavia. —The rice-grounds receive but one ploughing, which isgiven in the middle of March, and the feeds fown at the end of the fame month, in waterto the feedfman’s knees, which is left on the ground till the beginning of June, when thecrop is weeded by hand, by women half naked, with their petticoats tucked to theirwaifts wading in the water ; and they make fo droll a figure, that parties in pleafantry,at that feafon, view the rice grounds. When the weeding is finilhed, the water is drawnolf for eight days; and it is again drawn off when the ear begins to form, till formedafter which it is let in again till the rice is nearly ripe, which is about the end of Auguft,when it is reaped, or in the beginning of September; and by the end of that month, allis finilhed. Quantity, of feed, the eighth of a moggio per pertica, produce twenty-fiveto thirty moggio rough, or eleven and a half or twelve white. Price 37! livres themoggio, (17I. 8s. per Englilh acre,) which produce is fo large, that this minute I fufpedlthe higheft crop gained, and not an average one. The moggio of rice weighs one hun-dred and fixty pounds of twenty-eight ounces. The ftraw is of ufe only for litteringcows; and the chaff, like that of all other grain, from a notion of its being unwhole-fome, is thrown on to the dunghill. They low rice three years in fucceflion, and thena courfe of fomething elfe. See Courfes of Crops. The rice is rendered merchantableby being pounded in a mill by Hampers, turned by a water-w'heel.

In the great road there is a ftone, at five miles from Milan, nearer than which it isprohibited to fow rice.

State of Venice. — Verona. —Of the produce of the rice-grounds in the Veronefe,.they reckon one-third for expences, one-third for water, and one-third profit.

Parma. — Count Schaffienatti has fown rice, at Vicomero, eighteen years in fucceflionon the fame land, without any reft or manure. Sow on fifty-four biolcchi. ninety Jiaji ; andthe produce eighteen for one. Pie digs the ground, as it is too marlhy to plough it wellthis cofts 3000 livres (each 2|d.) The ftraw fells at 80 livres the load, of eighty peft yof twenty-five pounds (three-fourths of a pound Englilh), Oxen alfo eat it. Rice is

reckoned