_Havre_, the port receiving most of the trade from the United States, is the port of Paris. _Rouen_ is the chief seat of cotton manufacture. _Paris_ and _Rheims_ are noted for shawls. _Lille_ and _Roubaix_ are centres of woollen manufacture. _Lyons_ is the great seat of silk manufacture. =Italy.=--Italy is a spur of the Alps extending into the Mediterranean Sea. From its earliest history it has been an agricultural state, and, excepting the periods when it has been rent by wars, it has been one of the most productive countries in the world. Wheat is extensively grown, but the crop is insufficient for home consumption, and the deficit is imported from Russia and Hungary. A large part of the wheat-crop is grown in the valley of the Po River. Flax and hemp are grown for export in this region; and corn for home consumption is a general product. Cotton is a good crop in Sicily and the south, but the amount is insufficient for use and must be made up by imports from the United States and Egypt. Silk, fruit, and vegetables are the staple products that connect Italy commercially with the rest of the world. About a million people are concerned in the silk industry, and Italy is one of the foremost countries in the world in the production of raw silk. Most of the crop is produced in northern Italy; western Europe and the United States are the chief buyers. The silk of the Piedmont region is the best in quality. Fruit is the crop next in value to raw silk. Sicilian oranges and lemons, from about twenty millions of trees, find a ready market in Europe; the oranges come into competition with the California and Florida oranges of the United States, in spite of the tariff imposed against them by the latter country. Olives are probably the most important fruit-crop. Both the preserved fruit and the oil are exported to nearly every civilized people. Much of the oil is consumed at home, very largely taking the place of meat and butter. Lucca-oil is regarded as the best. [Illustration: ITALY] The grape-crop is enormous, and the fruit itself is exported. Some of the fruit sold as "Malaga" grapes throughout the United States during winter months comes from Italy. Chianti wine, from the vineyards around Florence, has hitherto been regarded as an inferior product, but the foreign demand for it is steadily increasing. The Marsala wines of Sicily are largely exported. Among mineral products the iron deposits in the island of Elba are undoubtedly the most valuable, but they are yet undeveloped to any great extent. The quarries at Carrara produce a fine marble that has made Italy famous in sculpture and architecture. Much of the boracic acid used in the arts comes from Tuscany, and the world's chief supply of sulphur comes from the neighborhood of Mount Etna in Sicily. Of this Americans buy about one-third.