[75] Zurich has made its city forest, the Sihl-Wald, a great public pleasure-ground that pays large sums annually into the city treasury, besides yielding inestimable dividends in the shape of health and happiness to the citizens. This forest has been owned by Zurich ever since 1309, and has been carefully administered for centuries, and is now managed on the most approved scientific principles by corps of trained foresters. Last year the net profits were something over eight dollars an acre, or a total of about twenty thousand dollars, for the city treasury. Half the annual yield of wood is from thinnings alone. In the economic treatment of the forest, its value as a pleasure-ground is not forgotten; the landscape is preserved unharmed, and the place made thoroughly and pleasantly accessible.
[76] Early in the seventeenth century a king of Spain came to see a clock which had been made by Jacques Droz, who resided at Locle, and whose automatons were much noted. Upon the clock there were seated a shepherd, a negro, and a dog. As the hour was struck the shepherd played upon his flute, and the dog fondled gently at his feet. But when the king reached forth to touch an apple that hung from a tree under which the shepherd rested, the dog flew at him and barked so furiously that a live dog in the street answered him. One of the courtiers of the king ventured to ask the negro, in Spanish, what time it was. There was no reply, but when the question was repeated in French, an answer was given. All of them at once voted that the clock was the work of an evil one.
[77] It is estimated that 200 francs’ worth of steel will make 525,000 francs’ worth of common watch-springs.
[78] On the new federal palace at Bern, in progress of construction in 1890, men were employed to act as turnspits, in immense wheels, for elevating the large blocks of stone.
[79] Adams and Cunningham, “The Swiss Confederation.”
[80] The Fête des Vignerons, which occurs once in fifteen years at one of the villages on the Lake of Geneva, is the most brilliant festival held in Switzerland, and is accompanied with all the light, joyous mirth of the ancient Bacchanalian festivals. It is graphically described in Cooper’s “Headsman.”
[81] The word Alp is a provincialism, and means an elevated pasture, and hence the name of the mountains on which the pastures exist.
[82] Liquid manure fills an important part in the economy of Swiss husbandry, under the name of Jouche or Mist-Wasser in the German Cantons, and of Lisier in the French Cantons. They collect in large casks the drainage of their manure-piles, stables, and hog-pens, and bring it in carts to the fields, where it is drawn off into wooden tubs fitted to the shoulders of men, and sometimes of women, who, walking along the furrows, distribute it in due proportion to each plant, by stooping to the right and left, the coffee-colored nectar pouring over their heads. It would be impossible to perform an uncleanly task in a more delicate manner.
[83] The great projector did not live to see the accomplishment of his grand work.
[84] The construction of the St. Gothard railway stopped this indemnity.