same. The _salon_ of the Casa-Belgioiosa is
superior to any thing 1 have ever seen. The mixture called _scagliuola_,
of which they make their walls and floors, is so like the finest marble,
as to be scarcely distinguishable from it. The nights of the 20th and
21st instant, the rice ponds froze half an inch thick. Droughts of two
or three months are not uncommon here, in summer. About five years ago,
there was such a hail as to kill cats. The Count del Verme tells me of
a pendulum odometer for the wheel of a carriage. Leases here are mostly
for nine years. Wheat costs a louis d'or the one hundred and forty
pounds. A laboring man receives sixty livres, and is fed and lodged. The
trade of this country is principally rice, raw silk, and cheese.

April 23. _Casino_, five miles from Milan. I examined another
rice-beater of six pestles. They are eight feet nine inches long. Their
ends, instead of being a truncated cone, have nine teeth of iron, bound
closely together. Each tooth is a double pyramid, joined at the base.
When put together, they stand with the upper ends placed in contact, so
as to form them into one great cone, and the lower ends diverging. The
upper are socketed into the end of the pestle, and the lower, when a
little blunted by use, are not unlike the jaw-teeth of the mammoth, with
their studs. They say here, that pestles armed with these teeth, clean
the rice faster, and break it less. The mortar, too, is of stone, which
is supposed as good as wood, and more durable. One half of these
pestles are always up. They rise about twenty-one inches; and each makes
thirty-eight strokes in a minute; one hundred pounds of rough rice is
put into the six mortars, and beaten somewhat less than a quarter of
an hour. It is then taken out, put into a sifter of four feet diameter,
suspended horizontally; sifted there; shifted into another of the same
size; sifted there; returned to the mortars; beaten a little more than
a quarter of an hour; sifted again; and it is finished. The six pestles
will clear four thousand pounds in twenty-four hours. The pound here
is twenty-eight ounces: the ounce equal to that of Paris. The best rice
requires half an hour's boiling; a more indifferent kind, somewhat less.
To sow the rice, they first plough the ground, then level it with a
drag-harrow, and let on the water; when the earth has become soft, they
smooth it with a shovel under the water, and then sow the rice in the
water.

_Rozzano_.