cretaceous tufa has slipped bodily down to the foot of the crag,
against which it leans in an inclined position. This was eviscerated
and converted into two cottages, but the cottagers have been ejected,
and it is now a villa residence. An acquaintance at Tours has rented it
for his family as a summer seat.

Some fifty or sixty years ago La Roche Corbon was "a village sculptured
up the broken face of the rocks, with considerable skill, and what with
creeping vines, snatches of hanging gardens, an attempt here and there
at a division of tenements, by way of slight partitions cut from the
surface, wreaths of blue smoke issuing out of apertures and curling up
the front, and the old feudal tower, called Lanterne de la Roche
Corbon, crowning the summit, the superincumbent pinnacle of excavated
rock on which it stands looking as if it were ready to fall and crush
the whole population beneath, this lithographed village has altogether
a curiously picturesque look." But at Beaumont-la-Ronce, north of
Tours, may be seen a whole street of cave habitations still occupied,
wreathed with vines and traveller's joy.

In the department of Maine et Loire, and in a portion of Vienne, whole
villages are underground.

There is often very valuable vineyard land that has to be walled round
and every portion economised. What is done is this: the owner digs a
quarry in the surface; this forms a sort of pit accessible on one side,
the stone taken from this being employed to fence round his property.
Then, for his own dwelling, he cuts out chambers in the rock under his
vineyard, looking through windows and a door into the quarry hole. For
a chimney he bores upwards, and then builds round the opening a square
block of masonry, out of which the smoke escapes.