Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/471

 STATISTICS.] I T A L Y 451 southern Tuscany (tit Piacenza, Montepuleiano, and Siena) it was formerly an important industry ; now it chiefly flourishes in the province of Aquila and other parts of the Napoletano, and in the island of Sicily. Aniseed is abundantly grown in the Romagna and the Abruzzi ; the province of Aquila produces about 800 quintals per annum. Liquorice grows wild in all the southern part of the peninsula, and in some portions of Sicily is considered a vile weed ; but in certain localities, as in the province of Teramo, it is the object of regular cultivation. The vine is cultivated throughout the length and breadth of Italy, but in not a few of the provinces its relative importance is slight. &quot;While in some of the districts of the south and the centre the vine occupies from 10 to 20 per cent, of the cultivated area, in some of the northern provinces, such as Soiidrio, Belluno, Grosseto, &c., the average is only about 1 or 2 per cent. The methods of cultivation are sutficieutly varied ; but the planting of the vines by themselves in long rows of insignificant bushes is decidedly the exception. In Lombardy, Emilia, Romagna, Tuscany, the Marches, Umbria, the Terra di Lavoro, and other southern provinces, they are trained | to trees which are either left in their natural state or subjected to i pruning and pollarding. In Campania and Terra di Lavoro the | vines are allowed to climb freely to the tops of the poplars much as j they would do in their native woods ; but the wines obtained by ! this system of cultivation are said to be of inferior quality. In the rest of Italy the elm and the maple are the trees mainly employed as supports. Artificial props of several kinds wires, cane work, I trellis work, &e. are also in use in many districts, and in some the { plant is simply permitted to trail along the ground. The vintage takes place, according to locality and climate, from the beginning of j September to the beginning of November. Table XI. gives details I for the different districts : Acres. ] Gallons. Piedmont : 289,853 j 59,536,312 !; Latium. Lombardy ; 347,882, 41,696.644 i Adriatic vinccs of the- n-chcs and) o- 9f). ,., 1fi1 ftlo &amp;lt; Sicily Umbria ( : 339,204 42,181,612 &u . A ni . d Total ( 12,621,039 18,390,328 77,758,472 80,702,688 93,420,090 9,918,194 597,000,748 Xext to the cereals and the vine the most important object of cultivation in Italy is the olive. In Sicily and the provinces of Reggio, Catanzaro, Cosenza, and Lecce this tree flourishes freely and without shelter ; as far north as Home, Aquila, and Teramo it requires only the slightest protection ; in the rest of the peninsula it runs the risk of damage by frost every ten years or so. The pro portion of ground under olives is no less than from 20 to 36 per cent, at Porto Maurizio, and in Reggio, Lecce, Bari, Chieti, and Leghorn it averages from 10 to 19 per cent. Throughout Piedmont, Lombard}, the Yeneto, and the greater part of Emilia, the tree is of little importance, though in a number of the provinces it is culti vated on a small scale. In the olive there is great variety of kinds, and the methods of cultivation differ greatly in different districts ; in Bari, Chieti, and Lecce, for instance, there are regular woods of nothing but olive-trees, while in middle Italy we have olive-orchards with the interspaces occupied by crops of various kinds. The Tuscan oils from Lucca, Calci, and Buti are considered the best in the world ; and those of Bari, Umbria, and western Liguria rank next. The following table (XII.) indicates more particularly the distribution of the cultivation : Acres. Gallons. Piedmont..... 138.990 205,062 7,551,808 324,654 4,304,498 6,270,132 102,959 667,392 344,205 257,905 127,458 2,108,348 18,868.278 14,003,880 16,065,236 4.642,110 Lombardy 11,344 8,737 209,864 11,598 188,465 294.735 Adriatic pro-} vinces of the|- LijxiirU Emilia Marches and) Umbria { Tuscan v Mediterranean do. Sicilv Sardinia Total 2,224.662! 74,483,002 The cultivation of oranges, lemons, and their congeners (collec tively designated in Italian bytheterma^-it??iz)isof somewhat modern date, the introduction of the Citrus Mgaradia being probably due to the Arabs ; but it has received so great a development in certain parts of the country as to be highly characteristic. Sicily stands facile princcps in this respect, the area occupied by the acjrumdi Casi-rta are the continental provinces which come next after Sicily. In Sardinia the cultivation is extensive, but receives little attention. Crude lime-juice is exported from Italy to the amount of about 10,000 quintals annually, and concentrated lime-juice to the amount of from 11,000 to 17,000 quintals. Essential oils are extracted from the rind of the agrumi, more particularly from that of the lemon and the bergamot ; the latter, however,&quot; is almost confined to the province of Reggio Calabria, where the average production amounts to 220,000 lb, an enormous quantity when it is remembered that 1000 bergamots are required for every 1T&amp;gt;. A perfume called (icifua nanfa, or lanfa, is obtained from the distillation of the orange-flowers, and the petals are also made into a conserve at Syracuse. Of the agrumi in their natural state the exportation has increased from 832,410 quintals (value 24,139,890 lire 1 ) in 1873 to 1,007,585 (value 36,022,575 lire) in 1877. In Southern Italy almonds, carob-trees, and figs are cultivated on a very extensive scale. The value of the almonds exported in 1876 (a favourable year) amounted to 13,570,000 lire. AValnuts are mainly grown in Piedmont, and particularly in the province of Cuneo ; hazels, on the contrary, have their greatest diffusion in the south, and particularly in the island of Sicily anil the province of Avellino. 2 The value of the export of walnuts and hazels amounts to between 3,000,000 and 4,000,000 lire per annum. Pistachio culture is confined to the province of Caltanisetta. The great variety in physical and social conditions which exists throughout the peninsula gives corresponding variety to the methods of agriculture. In the matter for instance of rotation of .crops there is an amazing diversity shifts of two years, three years, four years, six years, and in many cases whatever order strikes the fancy of the farmer. The fields of Tuscany for the most part bear wheat one year and maize the next, in pcrpettial interchanges, relieved to some extent by green crops. A similar method prevails in the Abruzzi, and in the provinces of Salerno, Benevento, and Avellino. In the plains of Lombardy a six year shift is common : cither wheat, clover, maize, rice, rice, rice (the last year manured with lupines), or maize, wheat followed by clover, clover, clover ploughed in and rice, rice, and rice manured with lupines. The Emilian region is one where regular rotations are best observed, a common shift being grain, maize, clover, beans and vetches, &c., grain, which has the disadvantage of the grain crops succeeding each other. In the pro vince of Naples, Caserta, &c., the method of fallows is widely adopted, the ground often being left in this state for fifteen or twenty years ; and in some parts of Sicily there is a regular inter change of fallow and crop year by year. The following scheme indicates a common Sicilian method of a type which has many varieties : fallow, grain, grain, pasture, pasture other two divi sions of the area following the same order, but commencing respec tively with the two years of grain and the two of pasture. In the matter of implements the Italian agriculturist is far behind. The old Roman plough, for instance, as it is described by Virgil and Columella, may still be seen in use in various parts of the country ; in Sardinia the plough that figures on the ancient monuments of the island might have been copied from that at work in the fields. Great improvements, however, have taken place in the more pro gressive regions ; iron has replaced wood, and coulter and share have been increased in massiveness. But even in the Veneto the heavy plough drawn by as many it may be as six pair of oxen cuts the furrow no deeper than 9 inches. As we proceed southwards the fashion becomes more simple and antique. The spade or vanga is a favourite implement, and in some parts, as in Emilia for instance, it is used to deepen the furrow made by the plough. Sowing and reaping machines have been successfully introduced in the lowland regions, but a large proportion of the country is little fitted for tluir employment. 3 Thrashing machines even in the remoter dis tricts have largely displaced the flail and the floor ; and straw cutters, corn-shellers, and similar inventions have begun to make their way. Manuring even of a very ordinary kind is but little attended to in a great part of the country ; though it has been a custom from time immemorial to grow a crop of lupines for the sole purpose of returning them to the soil as a stimulus. Though Italy is so distinctively an agricultural country, arid lias been subject so long to regular process of cultivation, a large pro portion of its arable laud is still in a state of utter neglect. It is calculated that the aggregate of the more important districts ready to give abundant increase in return for the labour of reclamation amounts to 571,000 acres ; and more than twice that quantity might be utilized. The most important works undertaken in this, direction since the formation of the kingdom are the draining df Lago Fucino and Lago Trasimeno, and the great scheme for the improvement of the&quot;Agro Romano&quot; decreed by parliament on llth December 1878. The breed of cattle most widely distributed throughout Italy is that known as the Podolian, usually with white or grey coat and enormous horns. Of the numerous sub-varieties, the finest is said to be that of the Val di Chiana, where the animals are stall-fed all the year round ; and next to this i.s ranked the so-called Valle Tiberina type. The wilder and ruder varieties are those which roam in vast herds over the Tuscan and Roman maremmas, and the cor responding districts in Apulia and other regions. In the Alpine 1 The Italian lira corresponds in value to the franc. 25 lire = 1 sterling, - The hazel has its specific name, Corylus arellana, from the fact here mcn- tioned. 3 A suggestive table of the proportion of mountainous and lowland country in the several provinces will be found in the Stitilii published by the Geographical Society in 1875. It is reprinted in the Annuario Stat. for 1881. According to this, tlie mountainous area is considerably in excess of the lowland.
 * Acres. Gallons.