chief object of agriculture is the vine," because there are not a half
dozen vineyards on the island, the soil being unsuitable; but there
are extensive vineyards on Pico, and these are owned almost wholly by
proprietors resident in Fayal.

There is a succession of crops of vegetables throughout the year; peas
are green in January, which is, indeed, said to be the most verdant
month of the twelve, the fields in summer becoming parched and yellow.
The mercury usually ranges from 50° to 80°, winter and summer; but we
were there during an unusually cool season, and it went down to 45°.
This was regarded as very severe by the thinly clad Fayalese, and I
sometimes went into cottages and found the children lying in bed to keep
warm. Yet roses, geraniums, and callas bloomed out of doors all the
time, and great trees of red camellia, which they cut as we cut roses.
Superb scarlet banana-flowers decked our Christmas-Tree. Deciduous trees
lose their leaves in winter there, however, and exotic plants retain the
habits they brought with them, with one singular exception. The _Morus
multicaulis_ was imported, and the silk-manufacture with it; suddenly
the trees seemed to grow bewildered, they put forth earlier and earlier
in the spring, until they got back to January; the leaves at last fell
so early that the worms died before spinning cocoons, and the whole
enterprise was in a few years abandoned because of this vegetable
insanity.

In spite of the absence of snow and presence of verdure, this falling of
the leaves gives some hint of winter; yet blackbirds and canaries sing
without ceasing. The latter are a variety possessing rather inferior
charms, compared with the domestic species; but they have a pretty habit
of flying away to Pico every night: it was pleasant to sit at sunset
on the high cliffs at the end of the island and watch the little brown