Productions.—In Switzerland, where good coal is not to be had, and where the houses are built of wood, the forests, which cover one-sixth of the whole surface, acquire very great importance. Wood-cutting is one of the chief employments of the people. The trees cut down in the highlands are deprived of their branches, and shot with inconceiv able rapidity over the slopes to the valleys below, whence they are removed by rafts, not only to different parts of Switzerland, but to France and Germany. It is, however, the mountain-pastures and the meadows, forming two-fifths of the whole surface of the country, that supply the chief occupations of the people—those of herds men and shepherds. During the summer the cattle are driven into the mountains, and tended by herdsmen, who take up their abode in the rude wooden huts known as chalets, and there the butter and cheese are made. In summer it is estimated that there are in Switzerland upward of a million of horned cattle, one-fourth of which consists of mulch cows. The produce of the dairy annually is valued at between one and two millions sterling. The best breeds of cattle are those of Saanen and Simmenthal in Bern, Gruy tsi•es in Freiburg, Schwyz, Zug, Entlebuch, Pralligau in the Grisons, and Glarus. The best cheese is made at Enunen, Saanen, Simmenthal, Gruyeres, and Ursern. The sheep of Switzerl.nd are of inferior breed, and their wool is short and coarse; but the goats' are numerous and fine. More than two-thirds of Switzerland does not supply corn. enough to feed its inhabitants. The plain, however, is a fertile agricultural country. In Vaud and Neufchatel the cultivation of the vine is the chief occupation of the peo ple; and in the Thur hill-country, more particularly on the shores of the lake of Con stance, there are extensive orchards, in which are prepared cider and kirschwasser, the latter being a liquor largely consumed in Switzerland. It will give some idea of the extent to which Switzerland is cultivated to state, that out of every 100 sq.m. of surface, 30 are occupied by rocks, glaciers, and water; 20 by hill-pastures; 17 by forests; 11 by arable lands; 20 by meadows; and 1 by vineyards. In the uncultivated part of the country the bear, the wolf, and the larger birds of prey are still met with ; and the chamois (q.v.) is hunted. The rivers and lakes abound with fine fish, and more espe cially with trout.
manufacturing districts are not scattered over the whole surface of the country; they are met with only on the northern frontier. The chief manufac tures are: at Zurich, silk-stuffs, to the value of £1,600,000 annually, and cottons; at St. Gall and Appenzell, cottons; in Aargau and Glarus, cottons, linens, silks, and hosiery; at Basel, silk-Stuffs to the value of £1,400,000, leather, paper, and tobacco; in Aargau_ and Lucerne, straw-plaiting; in Neufchatel; watch-making and cotton-printing; in Geneva, watchmaking and ijewelry. Although Switzerland is inland, its commerce in. proportion to population has long exceeded that of any other continental country. The chief imports are corn, salt, salt-fish, raw silks, and cotton, fruits and tropical produce, and the metals employed in watch-Making. The exports are wood and charcoal, cattle, tallow, cheese and butter, silks and cottons, watches and jewelry. Internal communi cation has long been facilitated in Switzerland by excellent roads, and every advantage has been taken of the lakes to introduce steam-navigation. The plain is now overspread from one end to the other with a network of railways, which in many directions send. ramifications into the Alpine valleys, thus connecting closely all parts of the country.
the Swiss have peen very much split into distinct communi ties by the great mountain-chains which separate the cantons. One of the results has
been the weakness of the central power. Each valley has been intrusted with the making of its own laws, and the management of its own local affairs. The cantons are, in to this day in a great measure separate states. They are divided into two classes, abso lute democracies and representative democracies. In the former the chief power belongs to the landesgemeinde, an assembly of the whole adult male population, which meets once a year, to pass laws, and to regulate the taxes and expenditure of the canton.. Uri, the Unterwaldens,f"Appenzell, and Glarus have constitutions of this kind. In the: Grisons and the Valais, the people may be said to possess similar powers, as all measures must be approved of by them. In the other, the representative cantons, a great council is elected by the people, and to it are deputed most of the powers of the landesgemeinde. These local assemblies produce a remarkable effect on the Swiss people. Their debates have an importance far beyond that of an English town-council, or even of a colonial parliament, for their power is infinitely greater, and the population are more immedi ately interested in them. To the interest they excite is no doubt to be attributed in a great degree the intelligence and public spirit of the Swiss. Their greatest disadvan tage lay in the power they formerly had to levy war against each other, and to resist the general government in conducting the foreign policy of the country. But these defects have been to a great extent remedied by the constitution of 1848, which forms. the basis of the present constitution, which dates from 1874. It handed over the: control of the army, the conduct of foreign affairs, the settlement of disputes be ween the cantons, and the management of the police and post-office, to a federal assem bly (bundes versammtung) representing all the cantons. How far this assembly in enitled to interfere with the legislative action of the cantons, has not been very distinctly defined, but the tendency of legislation since its formation has been rather to trench than otherwise on their prerogatives. The federal assembly consists of two chambers-1st, the state council (stande rath); 2d, the national council (national rath). The former is composed of 44 members, 2 representing each canton; the latter, of 135 members, elected by the cantons in the proportion of 1 to 20,000 in habitants. These bodies depute the executive authority to the federal council (bundes rath), consisting of seven members, and holding office for three years. The president is merely one of the council, and he has none of the quasi-royal privileges of the American president. There is also a court called the federal tribune (bundes gericht), which acts as a high court of appeal, and consists of 9 members elected by the federal assembly-. Different systems of law still prevail in the different cantons, which to some extent re semble each other, the most of them having grown out of the old German codes. Except in a few frontier cantons, the Roman law has not been much regarded. Until 1874 the law of the Catholic cantons prescribed, for certain offenses, various degrees of corporal punishment, exposure on the pillory, and public penance in the churches; but in that year capital and corporal punishment was abolished throughout the confedera tion. In Switzerland property is much subdivided; of 485,000 heads of families, no less than 465,000 possess landed property. In the absence of great landed estates there is no powerful aristocratic class. There are no titles of Swiss origin, families possess ing such distinctions deriving them from abroad.