Vegetation and Agriculture.— Travellers generally agree that, with the exception, perhaps, of Crete, Corfu is the most beautiful of all the Greek isles, but resident foreigners complain of the monotonous colour of the olive, whose grayish-green is little relieved by the cypress and pine, or the mulberry and jujubier. This lack of variety, which is the more to be regretted as the island is adapted for the oak, the plane, the Spanish chestnut, and the w alnut, is mainly due to the fact that the government of Venice at one time gave premiums for planting olive-trees, partly to encourage the produce of oil, and partly to discourage the raising of wheat. Once planted, the olive has suited the people. Single trees of fi.-st quality yield sometimes as much as 2 gallons of oil, and this with little trouble or expense beyond the collecting and pressing of the fallen fruit. As the trees are allowed to grow unrestrained, they are generally much larger and more wide-spreading than those in Provence or Tuscany, and some are not less than three centuries old. It is worthy of remark that Homer names, as adorning the gaιden of Alcinous, seven plants only—the wild olive, the oil olive, the pear, pomegranate, apple, fig, and vine. Of these the apple and pear are now very inferior in Corfu; the others thrive well, and are accompanied by all the fruit-trees known in Southern Europe, with addition of the Japanese medlar (or loquat) and, in some spots, of the banana. When undisturbed by cultivation, the myrtle, arbutus, bay, and ilex form a rich brushwood and the minor flora of the island is extensive.

Corfiot proprietors in general display little taste for the country, and their absenteeism is probably increased by the “colonia perpetuafl by which the landlord grants a lease to the tenant and his heirs for ever, in return for a rent, payable in kind, and fixed at a certain proportion of the produce. Of old, a tenant thus obtaining half the produce to himself was held to be co-owner of the soil to the extent of one-fourth; and if he had three-fourths of the crop, his ownership came to one-halt Such a tenant could not be expelled but for non-payment, bad culture, or the transfer of his lease without the landlord’s consent. Attempts have been made to prohibit so embarrassing a system; but as it is preferred by the agriculturists, the existing laws permit it. The portion of the olive crop due to the landlord, whether by colonia or ordinary lease, is paid, not according to the actual harvest, but in keeping with the estimates of valuators mutually appointed, who, just before the fruit is ripe, calculate how much each tree will probably yield. The large old fiefs (baronie) in Corfu, as in the other islands, have left their traces in the form of quit rents (known in Scotland by the name of feu-duties), generally equal to one-tenth of the produce. But they have been much subdivided, and the vassals may by law redeem them.

The Corsiot peasantry are reputed the idlest of all the Ionians. The olive receives little or no culture from them, and the vineries alone are laboured by the broad heart-shaped hoe. The vintage, which begins on the festival of Santa Croce, or the 26th of September (O.S.), is neither a pretty nor a lively scene, and little care is taken in the various operations. None of the Corfu wines are prized.

Cottagers cultivate no gardens for themselves; they purchase their vegetables in the Corfu market, and a considerable sum goes annually to buy in Apulia the garlic and onions so largely used by the people.

The capital (noticed below) is the only city or town of much extent in the island; but there are a number of villages, such as Benizze, Gasturi, Ipso, Glypho, with populations varying from 300 to 1000.

Corfu contains very few and unimportant remains of antiquity. The site of the ancient city of Kerkyra iswell ascertained, about 1 ⅜ miles to the south-east of Corfu, upon the narrow piece of ground between the sea-lake of Calichiopulo and the Bay of Castrades, in each of which it had a port. Under the hill of Ascension are the remains of atemple, popularly calledof Neptune, a very simple Doric structure, which still in its mutilated state presents some peculiarities of architecture. Of Cassiope, the onlyothercity of ancientimportance, the name is still preserved by the village of Cassopo, and there are some rude remains of building on the site; but the temple of Zeus Cassius for which it was celebrated has totally disappeared. Throughout the island there are numerous monasteries and other buildings of Venetian erection, of which the best known are Paleocastrizza, San Salvador, and Pelleka.

The ancient Corcyreans delighted to identify their island with the Homeric Scheria—the kingdom of Alcinous and his Phaeacian subjects; but the first authentic event in the history of Corcyra is its colonization in 734 b.c. by the Corinthians, and the expulsion of the previous Cretan and Liburnian settlers. So prosperous was the new community that in a short time it rivalled the mother country, and in 695 b.c., in a sea-fight which is remarkable as the first on record, destroyed the fleet which had been sent to compel its allegiance. Not long afterwards, however, it was forced to recognize Corinthian supremacy by the tyrant Periander, the son of Cypselus. At a subsequent period its dissensions with the parent state brought on the Peloponnesian war, during which it repelled several attempts of the Lacedaemonians. After various vicissitudes it fell into the hands of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, and on his death it was seized by the Illyrian pirates. Under the Romans, who obtained possession in 229 b.c., it became an important naval station, and so continued till the fall of the Eastern Empire. In 1081 Robert Guiscard, the Norman, captured Corfu, and in 1085 he died at Cassopo. It was again conquered by his nephew Roger of Sicily in 1146; but it was recovered by Manuel Comnenus in 1152. In 1192 Richard I. of England landed at Corfu on his voyage from Palestine; and the forces of the fifth crusade were welcomed to the island after the capture of Zara. The Genoese corsair, Leon Vetrano, who had made himself master of what was then regarded as a Venetian possession, was defeated and executed, and the Venetian senate in 1206 sent a colony of ten noble families to secure its occupancy. Through the rest of the 13th and most of the 14th century, Corfu and the other Ionian Islands were a prey by turns to corsairs, and to Greek and Neapolitan claimants; and it was not till 1386 that the Corfiots voluntarily placed themselves under Venice, which in 1401, on the payment of 30,000 ducats, had its right to the island recognized by Ladislas, king of Naples. Barbarossa ravaged Corfu in 1537, and Selim II. did much the same in 1570. In 1571 the great fleet which was about to become illustrious through the battle of Lepanto, was reviewed at Corfu by the generalissimo, Don John of Austria. The last and greatest struggle for the possession of the city and island was in 1716, when the forces of Achmet III. were defeated by the Venetians under Count Schulenburg, already famous for his crossing of the Oder and his share in t∏e battle of Malplaquet. The peace of Campo Formio gave the Ionian Islands to the French, but in 1799 they were forced to capitulate to a Russo-Turkish fleet. By the treaty of Paris, 1815, the republic of the Ionian Islands was revived, and placed under the protectorate of Great Britain, Corfu being the chief island of the group. In 1864 that protectorate was resigned in favour of the kingdom of Greece, and Corfu now forms one of the nomarchies of that country, along with the neighbouring islands of Merlera, Fano, Salmastraki, Paxo, Antipaxo, and Leukadia.

Literature·.—Baron Theotpky, Details sur Corfou; MuBtoxidi, Notizieper ser-ire alia storia Corcirese, 1804; J. P. Bellare, Precis des operations générales de la division française du Levant, 1805; Jervis, History of Corfu, 1852; Alb Mousson. Bin Besuch auf Korf uim Sept. 1858, Zurich, 1859; Ansted's The Ionian Islands, 1803; Tuckeιτnann's Gre<,ks of To day, 1874.

Corfu, the capital of the above island, stands on the broad part of a peninsula, whose termination in the citadel is cut from it by an artificial fosse formed in a natural gulley, with a salt-water ditch at the bottom. Seen from the water, or from a height, it is picturesque in masses, but in detail it is not to be praised for either beauty or comfort. Having grown up within fortifications, where every foot of ground was precious, there is nothing spacious about it except the handsome esplanade between the town and the citadel. Indeed, it is still, in spite of recent improvements, a perfect labyrinth of narrow, tortuous, up-and-down streets, accommodating themselves to the irregularities of the ground, few of them fit for wheel carriages. The palace, built by Sir Thomas Maitland, is a large structure of white Maltese stone, but the exterior has no architectural merits, although internally its apartments are very stately. In several parts of the town may be found houses of the Venetian time, with some traces of past splendour, but they are few, and are giving place to structures in the modern and more convenient French style. Of the thirty-seven Greek churches the most important are the cathedral, dedicated to Our Lady of the Cave (17 ∏αvαγια 'fi<πηλnhτισσa.) ; St Spiridion’s, with the tomb of the patron saint of the island; and the suburban church of St Jason and St Sosipater, reputed the oldest in the island. The city is the seat of a Greek and a Roman Catholic bishop; and it possesses a gymnasium, a theatre, an agricultural and industrial society, and a library and museum preserved in the buildings formerly devoted to the university, which was founded by Lord Guildford in 1823, but disestablished on the cessation of the English protectorate. There are three suburbs of some importance—Castrades, Manduchio, and San Rocco. The old fortifications of the town, being so extensive as to require a force of from 10,000 to 20,000 troops to man them, were in great part thrown down by the English, and a simpler plan adopted, limiting the defences to the island of Vido and the old citadel. Population about 25,000.