near approach of the Cevennes and Alps, which only leave there a passage for the Rhone.  Whether such a shelter exists or not, in the States of South Carolina and Georgia, I know not.  But this we may say, either that it exists, or that it is not necessary there; because we know that they produce the orange in open air; and wherever the orange will stand at all, experience shows that the olive will stand well; being a hardier tree.  Notwithstanding the great quantities of oil made in France, they have not enough for their own consumption, and therefore import from other countries.  This is an article, the consumption of which will always keep pace with its production.  Raise it; and it begets its own demand.  Little is carried to America, because Europe has it not to spare.  We therefore have not learned the use of it.  But cover the southern States with it, and every man will become a consumer of oil, within whose reach it can be brought, in point of price.  If the memory of those persons is held in great respect in South Carolina, who introduced there the culture of rice, a plant which sows life and death with almost equal hand, what obligations would be due to him who should introduce the olive tree, and set the example of its culture!  Were the owner of slaves to view it only as the means of bettering their condition, how much would he better that, by planting one of those trees for every slave he possessed!  Having been myself an eye-witness to the blessings which this tree sheds on the poor, I never had my wishes so kindled for the introduction of any article of new culture into our own country.  South Carolina and Georgia appear to me to be the States, wherein its success, in favorable positions at least, could not be doubted, and I flattered myself, it would come within the views of the society for agriculture, to begin the experiments which are to prove its practicability.  Carcassonne is the place from which the plants may be most certainly and cheaply obtained.  They can be sent from thence by water to Bordeaux, where they may be embarked on vessels bound to Charleston.  There is too little intercourse between Charleston and Marseilles, to propose this as the port of exportation.  I offer my services to the society, for the obtaining and forwarding any number of plants which may be desired.

Before I quit the subject of climates, and the plants adapted to them, I will add, as a matter of curiosity, and of some utility too, that my journey through the southern parts of France, and the territory of Genoa, but still more the crossing of the Alps, enabled me to form a scale of the tenderer plants, and to arrange them according to their different powers of resisting cold.  In passing the Alps at the Col de Tende, we cross three very high mountains, successively.  In ascending, we lose these plants, one after another, as we rise, and find them again in the contrary order, as we descend on the other side; and this is repeated three times.  Their order, proceeding from the