ISERE. This French department has a more than usually varied produce, including wheat, rye, barley, maize, huckwheat, peas and beans, potatoes, fruit of all kind, walnuts, mulberries, almonds, medicinal plants, hemp, &c. Vines are mostly grown in the fertile valleys, trained either to greenwood supports of maple or cherry-tree, or to dry tall poles of chestnut wood ; vines thus grown are called high vines (hautins). )3ut on the hill slopes in favourable situations and in the Rhone dis trict, the low vines, as they are called when unsupported, produce a stronger better-keeping wine, and more fitted for transport. The pro duce of wine in ordinary years is 5 to 6 million gallons, the best of which is produced in the neighbourhood of the Rhone. The mulberry grounds are extensive; the number of trees exceeds a million.
In mineral wealth the department is very rich. Iron, lead, copper, and coal mines are worked ; gold and silver mines have been worked, but are now abandoned. In the year 1837 a vein of platina was discovered in the valley of the Brae. Marble, granite, por
phyry, gypsum, slate are quarried. Antimony, zinc, cobalt, rock-crystal, vitriol, sulphur are found.
The industrial products consist of sailcloth, table and household linen, gloves, soldiers' uniforms, calicoes, printed cottons, oil, tur pentine, liqueurs, and mineral acids. There are iron, copper, and lead foundries, steel works, zinc and copper rolling factories, mar ble sawing mills, paper and vellum works, naileries, dyehouses, glass-works, cotton yarn manufactories, magnaneries, and silk throwing establishments, Of the manufacturing towns of this depart ment, Vienne is among the most conspicuous. It is one of the principal seats of the woollen manufactures in the south of France; common cloth, pasteboard, soap, leather, glass bottles, paper, chemical products, &c., are also made; and there are establishments for reeling and throwing silk, dye-houses, iron furnaces, steal works, sheet copper and lead works, copper and brass foundries.