I have now resided upwards of a week at Lagouelle’s, the Hotel Royale, and can tell you something of the place and of the inhabitants of CAEN.  Caen however is still-life after Rouen:  but it has been, and yet is, a town exceedingly well-deserving the attention of the lounging traveller and of the curious antiquary.  Its ecclesiastical edifices are more ancient, but less vast and splendid, than those of Rouen; while the streets and the houses are much more wide and comfortable.  This place is the capital of the department of CALVADOS, or of LOWER NORMANDY:  and its population is estimated at forty thousand souls.  It has a public library, a school of art, a college, mayoralty, and all the adjuncts of a corporate society.[96] But I must first give you something in the shape of political economy intelligence.  Caen with its arrondissemens of Bayeux, Vire, Falaise, Lisieux, Pont L’Eveque, is the country of pasturage and of cattle.  It is also fertile in the apple and pear; and although at Argences there have been vineyards from time immemorial, yet the produce of the grape, in the character of wine,[97] is of a very secondary description.  There are beautiful and most abundant market gardens about Caen; and for the last seventy years they have possessed a garden for the growth and cultivation of foreign plants and trees.  It is said that more than nine hundred species of plants and trees are to be found in the department of CALVADOS, of which some (but I know not how many or how few) are considered as indigenous.  Of forests and woods, the number is comparatively small; and upon that limited number great injuries were inflicted by the Revolution.  In the arrondissement of Caen itself, there are only 344 hectares.[98] The truth is, that in the immediate neighbourhood of populous towns, the French have no idea of PLANTING.  They suffer plain after plain, and hill after hill, to be denuded of trees, and make no provision for the supply of those who are to come after them.  Thus, not only a great portion of the country about Rouen—­(especially in the direction of the road leading to Caen—­) is gradually left desolate and barren, but even here, as you approach the town, there is a dreary flatness of country, unrefreshed by the verdure of foliage:  whereas the soil, kind and productive by nature, requires only the slightest attention of man to repay him a hundred fold.  What they will do some fifty years hence for fuel, is quite inconceivable.  It is true that the river Orne, by means of the tide, and of its proximity to the sea, brings up vessels of even 200 tons burthen, in which they may stow plenty of wood; but still, the expenses of carriage, and duties of a variety of description—­together with the dependence of the town upon such accidental supply—­would render the article of fuel a most expensive concern.  It is also true that they pretend that the soil, in the department of Calvados, contains coal; but the experiments which were made some years ago at Littry, in the arondissement of Bayeux, should forbid the Caennois to indulge any very sanguine expectations on that score.