ABSTRACT
France is of special interest as being the only country in Western Europe where national efforts are made to maintain a peasantry system as distinct from the systems of small commercial farms common elsewhere. The western part of Northern France is wetter than the east: it is a land of grass and of livestock, dairy cattle and small animals, of apple trees, and cider. The southern part of France is dominated by the mountain block that links the Alps and the Pyrenees: this falls away quickly on the east to the Rhone-Saone valleys, and on the west to the wide plain of the Garonne which stretches to the sea. The higher districts are largely left as pasture; the animals spend their summers there and come down to the valleys for the winter. The south-east part of the high country from the Cevennes to the Mediterranean was formerly fairly densely populated; its steep slopes had been terraced to conserve the soil.
