culated berries, in mitre-looking capsules. When the seed has
been shaken from the plant, the tops are brought together, and form
those excellent besoms which, throughout southern Europe, supply the
place of birch-broom, than which they are more elastic, not so
brittle, and much cleaner. The ultimate fibrils of this plant are
sometimes sold in little bundles for the purpose of being slit, and
receiving the small Neapolitan firework called _gera foletti_, which
scintillates like a fire-fly. Other kinds of millet and pannick are
also grown here; care being taken to plant them far from the vine and
mulberry, as they make considerable demands on the soil. Rice is said
to have constituted the sole aliment of the republicans of early Rome,
and it is still largely cultivated in many parts of Italy. In the
low-land about Viareggio, it monopolizes the ground almost as much as
the Grand Turk in the more interior parts of the country.

LUPINS

Lupins are largely cultivated, both for their own intrinsic value, and
to induce the growth of other plants. "We are bitter," say the Lupins
in an Italian work on agriculture; "but we enrich the earth which
lacks other manure, and by our bitterness kill those insects which, if
not destroyed, would destroy our successors in the soil. You owe much,
O husbandmen! to us Lupins."

HEMP.

Invaluable plant--pride of intelligent agriculture--that tendest thine
own fibre--and strength to him that rightly cultivates thee--and
constitutest the greatest element of mechanical power! What does not
England--the world itself--owe to that growth which we now
contemplate! Armies are encamped within thy walls--thou towest forth
the ship of discovery on her venturous way, and carriest man and his
merchandise to the Equator and to the Pole! Vain were the auspicious
breeze unless it blew upon thy opening sails; and what were the
sheet-anchor, but for that cable of thine which connects it with the
ship. Vegetable iron! incomparable hemp! Extemporaneous memory can
scarcely follow thy services. Talk of the battering-ram--but what
propelled it forward? The shot, whizzing in the teeth of adverse
winds, carries thy _coil_ to snatch the sailor from the rock where he
stands helpless and beyond aid from all the powers or productions of
man and nature but thine! Thy ladder, and thine alone, can rescue from
the house on fire! Look at the fisheries all over the world--the
herrings of Scotland and the cod of the Balt