nt heights, necessarily present, many
exceedingly interesting views, whose charming realities can alone be
correctly depicted by the pencil of the artist, and many of which do in
fact, merit to be delineated by the genius of a Claude.

The expansive plain through which this noble river gracefully
serpentines, possesses an exceedingly fertile alluvial soil on a
substratum of gravel, and is chiefly devoted to agricultural purposes;
but, occasionally contains extensive tracts of pasture land, which
fattens the majority of the cattle consumed in the adjacent districts.
The soils of the table lands are comparatively poor and infertile, being
for the most part constituted of a light sandy loam and tenaceous
calcareous marl, in which frequently a gravelly debris prevails, or
innumerable flint stones are interspersed.

The subformations of the country being chiefly composed of sandstone and
porous calcareous and siliceous rocks, renders the thin soils on these
higher tracts extremely dry and arid. And perhaps this is more
particularly the case where the white sandstone forms extensive mural
terraces along the northern borders of the vale of the Loire. At _la
Tranchee_ this rock being barely covered, and where it happens to be so
to any depth, by a porous loamy and gravelly deposit only,--this fact is
peculiarly and very happily demonstrated by the healthiness of the
place.

CLIMATE OF TOURAINE, ETC.

A characteristic freedom from terreous moisture and aqueous exhalations,
tends in no small degree to augment the natural salubrity of the
Tourainean climate, and perhaps it is mainly indebted to its peculiar
geological structure, which we shall presently consider more in detail,
for the preference awarded to certain of its localities by invalids,
over the somewhat milder but generally speaking more humid resorts of
southern France.

The topographical situation also of Tours secures to it some
advantageous peculiarities not possessed by many of the frequented
places of the south. Pau in the south-west of France, one of its most
formidable rivals, is, in consequence of its proximity to the Pyrenees,
subject to considerable variations of temperature, and although a
considerable distance from the coast, is very much under the influence
of the Atlantic. All the changes though in some degree modified to which
it gives rise extending as far as that place. These effects cannot be
properly said to reach Tours, which is situate