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 the hills are waste. There are some enclosures of stone, and some sheep. The first four years of madder are unproductive; the fifth and sixth yield the whole value of the land. Then it must be renewed. The _sparsette_ is the common or true saintfoin. It lasts about five years: in the best land it is cut twice, in May and September, and yields three thousand pounds of dry hay to the setterie, the first cutting, and five hundred pounds, the second. The _setterie_ is of seventy-five _dextres en tout sens_, supposed about two arpents. Lucerne is the best of all forage; it is sowed herein the broad-cast, and lasts about twelve or fourteen years. It is cut four times a year, and yields six thousand pounds of dry hay, at the four cuttings, to the setterie. The territory in which the _vin muscat de Frontignan_ is made, is about a league of three thousand _toises_ long, and one fourth of a league broad. The soil is reddish and stony, often as much stone as soil. On the left, it is a plain, on the right hills. There are made about one thousand _pièces_ (of two hundred and fifty bottles each) annually, of which six hundred are of the first quality, made on the _coteaux_. Of these, Madame Soubeinan makes two hundred, Monsieur Reboulle ninety, Monsieur Lambert, _medecin de la faculte de Montpelier_, sixty, Monsieur Thomas, _notaire_, fifty, Monsieur Argilliers fifty, Monsieur Audibert forty; equal to four hundred and ninety; and there are some small proprietors who make small quantities. The first quality is sold, _brut_, for one hundred and twenty livres the _pièce_; but it is then thick, and must have a winter and the _fouet_, to render it potable and brilliant. The _fouet_ is like a chocolate-mill, the handle of iron, the brush of stiff hair. In bottles, this wine costs twenty-four sous, the bottle, &c. included. It is potable the April after it is made, is best that year, and after ten