Economy in using every inch of soil, in avoiding the waste of sunshine on arable lands, and in preventing the waste of timber caused by letting trees grow untrimmed, has given the French landscape its most characteristic features. Hedges which the Englishman has learnt to love from his childhood, first because of the wild life they shelter and the blackberries and nuts they provide, and later on account of the beauty they add to every cultivated landscape, are an exceptional feature in France. In immense areas such a dividing line is never to be seen, and saving perhaps for a small tree that is scarcely more than an overgrown bush, there is little to break the horizon line except the tall poplars, birches, and other trees that line the main roads. These are not allowed to live idle, ornamental lives: they, like the toiling peasant, must work for their living by providing as many branches as possible for the periodical lopping. In this way wood for the oven and for the kitchen fire is supplied in nearly every department of the country.
In the fat and prosperous districts of Normandy, where rich grazing lands produce the butter for which the province is famed, hedges are as common as in England, and where mop-headed trees are not in sight, it is not easy to notice any marked difference between the two countries.
Brittany is the province where the wayside cross is most in evidence, but in every part of the country these symbols of the Christian faith are to be found. Outside Brittany it is rare to-day to see any one taking any notice of them, and no doubt the spread of education and the consequent shrinking of the superstitions of the peasantry, make the crucifix less and less a need on dark and misty nights. Offerings of wild flowers are still tied to the shaft of the wayside cross, where they rapidly turn brown, and resemble a handful of hay. The well-head is a feature of the farm and cottage which varies in every part of the land. It is frequently a picturesque object, having in many localities a wrought-iron framework for supporting the pulley-wheel.
A BRETON CALVAIRE. THE ORATORY OF JACQUES CARTIER.
Horses and mules are seldom to be seen without some touch of colour or curious detail in their harness. It may be a piece of sheep-skin dyed blue and fixed to the top of the collar, or that part of the harness will be of wood, quaintly devised, and studded with brass nails and other ornament. Red woollen tassels are much in favour in some districts.
The breeding of horses in great numbers takes place in the north coast regions of Brittany, Normandy, and between the mouth of the Seine and the Belgian frontier. Using cattle for draught purposes so very extensively no doubt keeps down the number of the horses in the country, but in 1905 the total had risen to considerably over three millions. Tarbes, a town near the Pyrenees, gives its name to the Tarbais breed of light cavalry and saddle-horses, and the chief northern classes are the Percheron, the Boulonnais for heavy draught work, and the Anglo-Norman for heavy cavalry and light draught purposes. Cattle, pigs, and asses have been increasing in numbers in recent years, but sheep and lambs have shown a very decided falling off, 22½ millions in 1885 having dropped to 17¾ in 1905. Sheep are raised on all the poorer grazing lands of the Alps, the Jura, the Vosges, the Cevennes, and the Pyrenees, and also on the sandy district of Les Landes on the Bay of Biscay. South-western France in general, and the plain of Toulouse in particular, produce a fine class of draught oxen. In the northern districts they are stall-fed on the waste material of the beet-sugar and oil-works, and of the distilleries.
It is a popular error to imagine that the State owns all the forests of France and even the wayside trees. This is due no doubt to the fact that certain governmental restrictions do apply to the owners of growing timber. The total of forest land amounts to only 36,700 square miles, or about 18 per cent of the whole country, and of this about a third belongs to the State or the communes. Fontainebleau has 66 square miles of forest, but although the best known, it is not by any means the largest, the Forêt d'Orleans having an area of 145 square miles. Much planting of pines has taken place in Les Landes, and that marshy district, famed for its shepherds who use stilts for crossing the wet places and water-courses, has by this means altered its character very considerably. Reafforestation is taking place on the slopes of the Pyrenees and the Alps which have been laid bare by the woodman's axe.
Standing quite apart from the rest of the agriculture of the country is the wine-grower. His industry requires very specialised knowledge, and his dangers and difficulties are in some ways greater than those of the farmer. It may be the terrible insect called the phylloxera that destroys the growth of the vine, it may be mildew, or it may be over-production, but any of these troubles bear hardly upon the vine-grower, who is, broadly speaking, a humble type of peasant with very little capital. Before the war with Germany these people were a fairly prosperous and contented class, but since that time formidable troubles have smitten them very heavily. The awful visitation of the phylloxera is said to have cost as much as the war indemnity paid to Germany, i.e. £200,000,000, and when it was discovered that certain American vines were not subjected to the ravages of the pest, and feverish planting had established the new varieties in the land, a new trouble, in the form of over-production, presented itself to the unfortunate growers. More land had been converted into vineyards than had ever produced such crops in the past, and a large production of wine in Algeria so lowered prices that in 1907 affairs in the Midi reached a critical state. Riots occurred at Béziers and Narbonne, incendiarism and pillage took place at Épernay and Ay, and for a time the Government found itself confronted with an infuriated mass of peasants, who blamed it for the disastrously low prices then prevailing. They also attributed the stagnation in the trade to the fraudulent methods of sale that had become common. They were not very far from the truth in stating that they did not reap so much advantage as those who grew cereals and beetroot, while paying for the protective policy in the high prices of food and all other commodities.