corn. Where it is waste the
growth is _chene-vert_, box, furze, thyme, and rosemary.

May 10. _Lismes. Lunel_. Hills on the right, plains on the left. The
soil reddish, a little stony, and of middling quality. The produce,
olives, mulberries, vines, corn, saintfoin. No wood and few enclosures.
Lunel is famous for its _vin de muscat blanc_, thence called Lunel,
or _vin muscat de Lunel_. It is made from the raisin muscat, without
fermenting the grain in the hopper. When fermented, it makes a red
muscat, taking the tinge from the dissolution of the skin of the grape,
which injures the quality. When a red muscat is required, they prefer
coloring it with a little Alicant wine. But the white is best. The
_piece_ of two hundred and forty bottles, after being properly drawn off
from its lees, and ready for bottling, costs from one hundred and twenty
to two hundred livres, the first, quality and last vintage. It cannot be
bought old, the demand being sufficient to take it all the first year.
There are not more than from fifty to one hundred _pieces_ a year, made
of this first quality. A _setterie_ yields about one _piece_, and my
informer supposes there are about two _setteries_ in an arpent. Portage
to Paris, by land, is fifteen livres the quintal. The best _recoltes_
are those of M. Bouquet and M. Tremoulet. The vines are in rows four
feet apart, every way.

May 11. _Montpelier_. Snow on the Cevennes, still visible from here.
With respect to the muscat grape, of which the wine is made, there are
two kinds, the red and the white. The first has a red skin, but a white
juice. If it be fermented in the _cuve_, the coloring matter which
resides in the skin, is imparted to the wine. If not fermented in the
_cuve_, the wine is white. Of the white grape, only a white wine can
be made. The species of saintfoin cultivated here by the name of
_sparsette_, is the _hedysarum onobrychis_. They cultivate a great
deal of madder (_garance_) _rubia tinctorum_ here, which is said to
be immensely profitable. Monsieur de Gouan tells me, that the pine,
of which they use the burs for fuel, is the _pinus sativus_, being
two-leaved. They use-for an edging to the borders of their gardens, the
santolina, which they call _garderobe_. I find the yellow clover here,
in a garden, and the large pigeon succeeding well, confined in a house.

May 12. _Frontignan_. Some tolerably good plains in olives, vines, corn,
saintfoin, and lucerne. A great proportion of