The climate of Manche is mild and humid, from its propinquity to the sea. Frosts are never severe; myrtles and fuchsias flourish in the open air. Excessive heat is also unusual; the predominant winds are south-west.
The characteristic industry of the department is the rearing of horses and cattle, carried on especially in the rich meadow of the eastern Cotentin; sheep are raised in the western arrondissement of Coutances. Wheat, buckwheat, barley and oats are the chief cereals cultivated. Manche is one of the foremost departments for the production of cider-apples and pears; plums and figs are also largely grown. Butter is an important source of profit, as also are poultry and eggs. Flourishing market-gardens are found in the west. The department contains valuable granite quarries in the Cherbourg arrondissement and the Chausey islands; building and other stone is quarried.
Villedieu manufactures copper-ware and Sourdeval iron and other metal-ware; and there are wool-spinning mills, paper-works and leather-works, but the department as a whole is industrially unimportant. There are oyster-beds on the coast (St Vaast, &c.), and the maritime population, besides fishing for herring, mackerel, lobsters or sole, collect seaweed for agricultural use. Coutances is the seat of a bishopric of the province of Rouen. The department forms part of the region of the X. army corps and of the circumscriptions of the académie (educational division) and appeal-court of Caen. Cherbourg (q.v.), with its important port, arsenal and shipbuilding yards, is the chief centre of population. St Lô (q.v.) is the capital; there are six arrondissements (St Lô, Avranches, Cherbourg, Coutances, Mortain, Valognes), with 48 cantons and 647 communes. Avranches, Mortain, Coutances, Granville and Mont Saint Michel receive separate treatment. At Lessay and St Sauveur-le-Vicomte there are the remains of ancient Benedictine abbeys, and Torigni-sur-Vire and Tourlaville (close to Cherbourg) have interesting châteaux of the 16th century. Valognes, which in the 17th and 18th centuries posed as a provincial centre of culture, has a church (15th, 16th and 17th centuries) remarkable for its dome, the only one of Gothic architecture in France.
