VERMONT (Fr. nerd mont, green mountain), one of the five New England states, and the first state received after the adoption of the federal constitution; lat. 42° 44'-45° n. and long, 71° 25'-73° 25' w. ; bounded on the n. by Canada, on the e. by the Connectil cut river, which separates it from New Hampshire; on the s, by Massachusetts; and on the w. by New York, from which it is separated for 100 m.'hy lake Champlain. It has an arca of 10,212 sq,m., divided into 14 counties.. The principal towns are Burlington, Montpelier (the capital), Rutland, Bennington, Windsor, St. Albans. The surface is rather hilly than mountainous, the Green mountains being rounded eminences 2,000 to ' 2,500 ft. high, bearing vegetation, and cultivated to their summits. The rivers 'are the Connecticut and its western branches, and the Lamoille, and smaller streams affording abundant water-power, and falling into lalt Champlain (q.v.). The state studded with small lakes. The geological formation are the lower groups of azoic and Silurian. East of the Green mountains is a bed of devonian or 30 m wide Drift covers the whole state. Along the western part of the state, a 20 belt quartz its covered by a bed of crystalline limestone 2,000 .
000 ft. thick. Slates great are found on lake Champlain, with hematite iron, supplying several blast-furnaces. There are deposits of gold, pyritous. copper ore, and at Rutland, rich quarries of statuary marble. Clay for white stoneware is found at Bennington, and there arc severalnames of soapstone. The climate is cold, with long and severe winters, but healthful—the temperature ranging from = 17° to 4- 92°. The soil is a rich loam, and the country well wooded with heinlock fir, spruce, oak, beech, sugar-maple, pine, hickory, elm, butternut, birch, cedar, ete.
The hills are well adapted for pasturage. The chief products are wool, cattle, maple sugar, butter, cheese, hay, and potatoes. In 1870, farms, of the average size of 134 acres, occupied 4,528,804 acres; and the live stock in 1870 was valued at $23,888,835.
The state has seine fine scenery, and beautiful waterfalls—as Bellows falls on the Con necticut, the Great falls of the Lamoille, falls of the Winooski, a fall of 70 ft. on the Missisquoi, etc. There are 799 m. of railway, two lines crossing the mountains. The chief business is agriculture; but there are 8 cotton-mills, 65 woolen-mills, and manu factures of lumber, machinery, leather, bar and pig iron, scales, etc. Vermont has 744 churches, or 1 to every 444 inhabitants; the university of Vermont, at Burlington, and 3 other colleges, with several theological and medical institutions, 41 academies, 3 nor tnal schools, and 2,830 public shools. In 1878 the taxable property was worth $303,202, 424. In 1870 there were 46 newspapers; in 1878, 66 periodicals. The governor, who holds office for two years, has a salary of .£200; the state treasurer, £100; and the secre tary of civil and military affairs, £55 a year. There are two houses of the legislature, elected by "every male citizen of peaceable behavior, 21 years old, and 1 year resident% in the state." The first settlement in Vermont was in 1724, when it was claimed as a part of the New Hampshire grants. In 1763, it was claimed by New York, under grants of Charles II. to the duke of York. For ten years the New York officers were resisted, and sometimes tied to trees and whipped by the lawless settlers. These contests were stopped by the Revolution; but Vermont, a refuge for settlers from other states, re mained 8 years out of the union. It was chiefly the Vermont militia that gained the victory of Plattsburg, on lake Champlain, in 1812; and the Green Mountain state con tributed very largely to the union forces in the war of secession. The population, one• seventh of which consists of persons of foreign birth, mostly from Ireland and Canada, with a very slight increase, owing to the large emigration to the western states, was in 1870, 330,551.