detached from the radicles of a plant with a flower strikingly like
the potatoe, and is used for a similar purpose to the jugulena.

This island was the granary of Athens before it nourished Rome; and
wheat appears to have been first raised in Europe on the plains of
eastern Sicily. In Cicero's time it returned eightfold; and to this
day one grain yields its eightfold of increase; which, however, is by
a small fraction less than our own, as given by M'Culloch in his
"Dictionary of Commerce." We plucked some _siligo_, or bearded wheat,
near Palermo, the beard of which was eight inches long, the ear
contained sixty grains, eight being also in this instance the average
increase; how many grains, then, must perish in the ground!

In Palermo, English gunpowder is sold by British sailors at the high
price of from five to seven shillings per English pound; the "Polvere
_nostrale_" of the Sicilians only fetches 1s. 8d.; yet such is the
superiority of English gunpowder, that every one who has a passion
for popping at sparrows, and other _Italian sports_, (complimented by
the title of _La caccia_,) prefers the dear article. When they have
killed off all the robins, and there is not a twitter in _the whole
country_, they go to the river side and shoot _gudgeons_.

The Palermo donkey is the most obliging animal that ever wore long
ears, and will carry you cheerfully four or five miles an hour
without whip or other _encouragement_. The oxen, no longer white or
cream-coloured, as in Tuscany, were originally importations from
Barbary, (to which country the Sicilians are likewise indebted for
the _mulberry_ and _silk-worm_.) Their colour is brown. They rival
the Umbrian breed in the herculean symmetry of their form, and in the
possession of horns of more than Umbrian dimensions, rising more