In the Burgundy wine district and the plain of the Saône a talent for cookery is very common in both sexes, and there are plain unpretending wives of small inn-keepers or wine-growers who would be perfectly capable of serving a royal feast, and not in the least disconcerted by the undertaking. All the Saône bargemen are said to be clever cooks, and they live extremely well. In the Morvan the peasants live with severe self-denial, chiefly on potatoes and thin soup flavoured with a morsel of bacon. Their drink is often a poor kind of perry or cider; they indulge in wine on market-days and sometimes sparingly at home, but then it is of a meagre quality. Near the Saône the people are a gardening as well as a cooking race; the Morvan people are not gardeners; a rich man may have a garden as a matter of luxury, but the peasants do not cultivate vegetables or fruit-trees. In some parts of the Morvan the spring comes six weeks later than at Chalon on the Saône. [Sidenote: The Fine Arts.] Lastly, in the Morvan there are no fine arts. There may be occasional artistic genius, like that of Gautherin, the sculptor, who began life as a poor Morvandeau shepherd boy, but such gifts find no natural development in the district. The Burgundy wine country, on the other hand, has always been favourable to art of all kinds, and to learning. Architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and all kinds of scholarship have flourished at Dijon in an association (perhaps not altogether accidental) with good cookery and the richest of all French vintages. [Sidenote: Departments.] [Sidenote: Provinces.] [Sidenote: Districts.] [Sidenote: Local Climates.]