April 15. Limone.  Coni.  I see abundance of lime-stone as far as the earth is uncovered with snow; i.e. within half or three quarters of an hour’s walk of the top.  The snows descend much lower on the eastern than western side.  Wherever there is soil, there is corn quite to the commencement of the snows, and I suppose under them also.  The waste parts are in two-leaved pine, lavender, and thyme.  From the foot of the mountain to Coni the road follows a branch of the Po, the plains of which begin narrow, and widen at length into a general plain country, bounded on one side by the Alps.  They are good, dark-colored, sometimes tinged with red, and in pasture, corn, mulberries, and some almonds.  The hill-sides bordering these plains are reddish, and where they admit of it are in corn; but this is seldom.  They are mostly in chestnut, and often absolutely barren.  The whole of the plains are plentifully watered from the river, as is much of the hill-side.  A great deal of golden willow all along the rivers on the whole of this passage through the Alps.  The southern parts of France, but still more the passage through the Alps, enable one to form a scale of the tenderer plants, arranging them according to their several powers of resisting cold.  Ascending three different mountains, Braus, Brois, and Tende, they disappear one after another:  and descending on the other side, they show themselves again one after another.  This is their order, from the tenderest to the hardiest.  Caper, orange, palm, aloe, olive, pomegranate, walnut, fig, almond.  But this must be understood of the plant; for as to the fruit, the order is somewhat different.  The caper, for example, is the tenderest plant, yet being so easily protected, it is the most certain in its fruit.  The almond, the hardiest plant, loses its fruit the oftenest on account of its forwardness.  The palm, hardier than the caper and the orange, never produces perfect fruit in these parts.  Coni is a considerable town, and pretty well built.  It is walled.

April 16. Centale.  Savigliano.  Racconigi.  Poirino.  Turin.  The Alps, as far as they are in view from north to south, show the gradation of climate by the line which terminates the snows lying on them.  This line begins at their foot northwardly, and rises as they pass on to the south, so as to be half way up their sides on the most southern undulations of the mountain now in view.  From the mountains to Turin we see no tree tenderer than the walnut.  Of these, as well as of almonds and mulberries, there are a few:  somewhat more of vines, but most generally willows and poplars.  Corn is sowed with all these.  They mix with them also clover and small grass.  The country is a general plain; the soil dark, and sometimes, though rarely, reddish.  It is rich, and much infested with wild onions.  At Racconigi I see the tops and shocks of maize, which prove it is cultivated here:  but it can be in small quantities only,