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418 NOTICES OF BOOKS.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Transcript
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
... Maitre Jpierre. Par Edmond About. A ...
tlie best advice , and ( shunning his native place , where he was sure to be laughed at ) takes a wild boar ' s ham in his handwalks into
, [ Bordeaux , tucks his stilts under his ami , and inquires of all likely passers-by for the wisest man in the City . Some stare at him ,
others send him on fool's errands . At last a young boy sends Mm to Ms tutor , a grave old gentleman sitting amongst heaps of books ,
who turns out to be a professor of Latin , but who , nevertheless , takes the offered hamand gives some very good advice out of tlie
, Georg sentence ics from and other Voltaire establishe , il Cultivons d authorities notre jar , din ending " with the famous
Maltre Pierre walks off immensely delighted ; raises money _Tby hunting acres ( " , that gets clearing some to " hel says p for he love _" cost , others many for a pay wild ; boar clears its his life 150 , ' )
and sows , it with pine , and oak . , But seeds of trees do not grow in . water like fisli-spawn ; soinstead of showing in Marchhis seeds
never and then come the up heat till June burnt , when , them the nearl water all is up prett . y So well all off he , the gets land _~ b y ; .
his first experiment is a thorough y good laughing at from all his fellow-villagers : but he goes to work again ; _snpj ) orts himself and
_Marinette by fishing , boat-building , and many other expedients , while he is trying to find a means of draining at a profit . Draining ' of "
, course , is easy . He works one winter with a gentleman from Paris , who lays drain tiles and gets a wonderful oak jxL _& ntation , but then
the cost was five times the value of the land , ( " draining for millionaires / ' he calls It , ) besides the certainty of the roots soon getting
down among the drain tiles and spoiling all the work . This , howevergives him a hint : he tells the disgusted Parisian , in his cool
Gascon way , , " I don't a bit regret all the money this has cost you , for It has taught me the secret I was looking for ! " His plan is simply
this : he takes his levels ; finds there is a very gentle fall towards one of the land-locked pools which lie along all tliis coast . Round
each hectare ( about 2 _J acres ) he digs a ditch a yard wide by half a yard deep : _& ve leagues of little ditches ; then a quarter of a league
of wide ditch to carry all the water off : this cost him actually three sous the yard . Then he sows Ms ground thickly with pine
and oak , gradually thins out for charcoal and vine poles , and at ten years' end has only about a thousand trees per acre , which he is
for graduall this y by going putting to thin his down hand to to 200 anything . How — he levelling raised the buildin money g ,
above all , by exterminating the wolves and wild cattle , and , bringing in a whole herd of half-wild horses belonging to various people
round—all this is most graphically told . His trees grow wonderfully the oak is found to thrive better here than anywhere : _" "We
seem ; to have got the secret ( he says ) of making it as fast-growing as the willow and as solid as iron . " " Now this soil is only two feet
thick—near sand , lying on a bed of hard ironstone , called ' alios 'but these trees are not stunted , as asli or elm might be , for they have tap roots , which may be even cut off without hurting their
418 Notices Of Books.
418 NOTICES OF BOOKS .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Feb. 1, 1862, page 418, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01021862/page/58/
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