A very
good tree produces sixty pounds of olives, which yield fifteen pounds of
oil: the best quality selling at twelve sous the pound, retail, and ten
sous, wholesale. The high hills of Languedoc still covered with snow.
The horse-chestnut and mulberry are leafing; apple trees and peas
blossoming. The first butterfly I have seen. After the vernal equinox,
they are often six or eight months without rain. Many separate
farm-houses, numbers of people in rags, and abundance of beggars. The
_mine_ of wheat, weighing thirty pounds, costs four livres and ten
sous. Wheat bread, three sous the pound. _Vin ordinaire_, good, and of
a strong body, two or three sous the bottle. Oranges, one sous
apiece. They are nearly finishing at Nismes a great mill, worked by a
steam-engine, which pumps water from a lower into an upper cistern, from
whence two overshot wheels are supplied, each of which turns two pair
of stones. The upper cistern being once filled with water, it passes
through the wheels into the lower one, from whence it is returned to the
upper by the pumps. A stream of water of one quarter or one half inch
diameter, supplies the waste of evaporation, absorption, fee.
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