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SPAIN may be roughly divided into five climates: (1) that of the north and of the Pyrenees, where rain is abundant; (2) the west or Atlantic climate, including Portugal; (3) the north-east or Mediterranean; (4) the east and south, or African climate; and (5) lastly, the climate of the great Central Plateau, or the Continental. All these are well marked, and differ greatly in their temperature, in elevation, in exposure, in rainfall, and in prevailing winds. To speak of an average temperature, or of an average rainfall in Spain, is only to mislead. The temperature of the south and south-east is higher than that of the opposite coast of Africa, while the winters in Castile recall those of Scandinavia in their bitterness. In some of the Asturian valleys there is, perhaps, the heaviest rainfall in Europe; while the lower valley of the Ebro is almost a desert, from want of rain; and in parts of Valencia and Murcia, and even in Andalusia, not a drop will fall for years; yet at times these provinces, and their driest portions, are visited—as in 1802, 1879, and 1881—by overwhelming and destructive floods. To strike an average, then, even for the same spot, through several years, is often merely deceptive.

We have remarked above on the similarity of the conformation of the western coasts of Galicia to those of Norway, Scotland, and Ireland. They partake also of the same Atlantic character in their climate and productions. Galicia and the Asturias are essentially grazing countries; and from the Galician ports, up to 1878, about 20,000 head of fatted cattle were annually sent to England. Except in the more sheltered valleys, where the productions of a warmer clime will flourish, the native flora is not unlike that of the milder parts of Ireland and of Devonshire. The average temperature of Santiago is about 55° Fahr., with a maximum of 95°, and a minimum of 28°; Oviedo is given as 54° average, maximum 80°, and minimum 24°; while the rainfall of the former is from 58 to 68 inches, and that of the latter varies from 38 to 50 in ordinary years, but in 1858 it attained 80 inches. Proceeding eastward we meet the northern or Pyrenean climate, where the rainfall is not so great, and, except in the immediate vicinity of the highest mountains, lessens gradually as we either go eastward or descend into the plains. The moisture is condensed and wrung out of the clouds brought by the watery western winds, and precipitated on the mountains of the west and north. From the Picos de Europa, in the province of Santander, which may be considered as the meeting-point of the two climates, the waters descend on the one side by the Ebro to the Mediterranean, by the Pisuerga to the Douro and the Atlantic, and by the shorter northern streams to the Bay of Biscay. In the valley of the Cabuervega (Santander) the rainfall is 57½ inches. Passing eastward we find Bilbao and San Sebastian, with an average temperature of 56° and 55°, a maximum of 93°, and minimum 23°, while the rainfall has diminished from 55 to 48 inches. At Vergara, more inland, it is 52. At Huesca, in Aragon, notwithstanding its proximity to the mountains, the rainfall is only 25 inches; at Balaguer, in Catalonia, only 15½. At Saragossa the climate becomes more extreme; the average is 60°, the maximum 96°, and the minimum 20°, while the rainfall descends to 14 inches. The equalizing influence of the neighbourhood of the sea is felt in the Mediterranean climate at Barcelona; for while the average is 63°, the maximum is only 88°, and the minimum 32°, and the rainfall ascends to 24 inches. The difference is still more marked if we compare the extreme oscillation between the maximum and minimum temperatures. At Saragossa this is from 120° to 130°; at Barcelona from 90° to 100° Fahr.

The productions of this northern zone vary greatly according to elevation and exposition. Those of the Basque Provinces still belong to the north temperate zone climate—cattle, corn, and cider, as well as wine. The olive, and the mulberry for silk, are almost unknown; but maize is largely grown. As we approach Catalonia these products give way to those of the Mediterranean region of Provence and of the Riviera—the olive, the grape, the mulberry. A powerful red wine is made on the lower southern spurs of the Pyrenees and of the Cantabrian Mountains, in the Riojas, in Navarre, and in Aragon. Much of it would be excellent if more attention were paid to the preparation, and especially to the conditions of transport. Great quantities are at present exported to France by sea from Bilbao and San Sebastian, and also by rail, for the purpose of mixing with the thinner and poorer clarets of Bordeaux, to fit them for the taste and market of England. In Catalonia the wine improves, and is less used for mixing. The chief kinds are a red wine, like Rousillon, and sweet, luscious wines, Rancio, somewhat like Muscat or Malaga. Of late the manufacture of effervescing wines like champagne has been carried on with considerable success. The wine made in Catalonia amounts to one-fifth of the whole produce of Spain. Already the orange and the palm appear.

Proceeding southwards from Catalonia, we gradually advance into the south-eastern and southern climate of Spain, a climate which is rather African than European in its character, and both whose products and dryness have more relation to the African continent than to that of the rest of Europe. It is here that the date-palm ripens—which it does not on the opposite coast of Algeria—and the camel breeds, and can be used as a beast of burden equally as in Egypt and the East. Sheltered by the mountain ranges to the east and north from the cold winds which sweep the plateau of Castile, exposed by the slope of the country to the full influence of the southern sun and its powerful evaporation, the characteristics of the climate are warmth and dryness, while the vicinity of the Mediterranean partly tempers the extreme range of heat and cold which might be found in lands more remote from the sea. Thus the average temperature of Valencia is 65°, its maximum 102°, its minimum 41°, and extreme range 100°. Alicante, still further south, has an average of 66°, a maximum of 100°, and a minimum of 35°. The average rainfall at Valencia is stated at 17, and that of Alicante at 18 inches; but, as remarked above, in this south-eastern district of Spain averages of rainfall are quite deceptive. In some years the quantity marked is only a very few inches, 3 or 6, over the whole district, and there are considerable portions where rain does not fall for years. The country is rendered fertile and productive, not by its rains, but by irrigation from the rivers, fed by the winter snows on the mountains which border the great plateau. At times, however, as in 1802 and 1879, storms of rain descend on the high lands of Murcia and the eastern sierras, and floods rush down, sweeping away dams which have stood for centuries, washing away towns and villages, and spreading destruction far and wide. To compute the rainfall of such floods into an average is only to play with figures. Murcia has an average temperature of 64°, maximum 112°, minimum 24°, and an extreme range of 120°. The rainfall averages about 12½ inches on the coast, but varies greatly; at Albacete it is said to average 13 inches. The directly southern coast, from the Cabo de Gata to Gibraltar, has a milder and more equable climate than that of the south-eastern coast; but in the inland valley of the Guadalquiver the range is more extreme, both for heat and cold. The dryness in the eastern district still continues from Cartagena to Almeria; the rainfall is said to be only 12 inches. At Malaga, while the average temperature is 66°, about the same as that at Valencia and Alicante, the maximum is said to be only 78°, and the minimum 53°. At Motril, between Malaga and Almeria, the maximum is 77°, and the minimum 52°. In Seville on the other hand, the average is 68°, with a maximum Of 118°, and a minimum of 30°. Cordova, somewhat colder, has a maximum of 93°, and a minimum of 27°. The rainfall is also more moderate at Malaga, 15½ inches, and 23 at Seville. Granada, in its upland but sheltered valley, at an elevation of 2681 feet, defended from the east and south by the snowy range of the Sierra Nevada, and by the mountains of Granada to the north, has still an average of 65°, with a maximum of 97°, and a minimum of 42°. The rainfall varies considerably in different years, and various geographers give its average as 23½ 33½, and the latest (Reclus) 48½. Cadiz has an Atlantic climate, which in temperature and greater rainfall, 37 inches, closely approximates to that of Madeira. Moving westward it decreases, at Gibraltar, 34½, San Fernando, 27; while at Huelva and Tarifa, where the moisture of the north-west gales is intercepted by the Portuguese mountains, it descends to 24½. We have now only to treat of the climate of the great central elevation, the plateau, which ranges at an average height of some 2000 feet above the sea. Thus, Madrid is 2148, Segovia 2299, Burgos 2873, Soria 3504, and the Escorial, 3683 feet above the sea-level. But even these altitudes do not wholly account for the rigour of the climate in the latitude of Naples, Rome, and Constantinople. We have seen how excellent is the climate of Granada at a nearly equal elevation, only three degrees further south. The extremes of heat and cold felt at Valladolid and Madrid are due more to the uncovered mountain ranges to the north, the treeless, waterless plains, over which the wind sweeps unchecked, than to mere elevation. The want of rain is greatly owing to the ranges of mountains parallel to the frontier and to the Atlantic in Portugal, which condense and wring all the moisture from the rain-clouds of the Atlantic, and distribute it almost wholly on the western slope. Thus at Lisbon the fall is 29, at Coimbra 35, at Oporto 63, in the mountains of Beira and Tras os Montes from 68 to 100 inches; while on the eastern slope, at Salamanca it is 9, Valladolid 12, at Badajoz 12½, Ciudad Real 14. From the bare granite range of the Guadarrama steals down the treacherous icy wind so fatal in Madrid—not sufficiently strong to extinguish a candle, but quite enough to destroy human life. It is the dislike of the Castilian peasant to trees, which would overshadow so much of his small property, the destruction of the mountain forests, and the want of good agriculture, which has embittered the climate of these plateaux. Were the hill-sides clothed with wood, the country dotted with farms, the wide and bare plains covered throughout the year with varied agricultural produce, the climate would soon be modified and become sensibly warmer, and no longer, as it at present is, an obstacle to civilization and to improvement. In spite of all neglect these plains grow some of the finest wheat in Europe, and the lower mountain ranges supply pasture in the summer for the immense flocks which return to winter in the plains of Estremadura. The average temperature of Madrid is 59°, its maximum 104° to 107°, and its minimum only 7°. That of Salamanca is said to be 57°, with a maximum of 97°, and a minimum of 12°. The average rainfall of Madrid is only from 9 to 14 inches, that of Salamanca 9, while Soria, nearer to the mountains, in some years reaches 25 inches.

From the above sketch of the climate the reader will expect to find the productions vary greatly in the different districts. The north and north-west are the lands of cattle and of pasture. In Galicia and in the Asturias the products are almost like those of the warmer parts of the south-west of England and of Ireland, save that in the more sheltered valleys the orange, citron, and pomegranate flourish; a palm is even now and then to be seen; and the wine, especially on the confines of Portugal, is excellent, and needs only more care in preparation to be a rival to the famous Port of the neighbouring country. In the eighteenth century, that of Ribadavia was considered to be the finest wine in all Spain. Maize, too, is freely grown; but on account of their extreme poverty, rye and spelt often replace both it and wheat as food for the peasantry. The upland plateaux afford excellent pasture, especially for cattle and horses; the hardy and sure-footed hacks of Galicia and the Asturias are celebrated. The mountains here are often clothed with wood; oaks of various kinds, and the edible chestnut, and the hazel-nut—of which over 1000 tons, value 23,000l., are annually exported from Gijon—grow on the lower spurs, giving food to herds of swine; beech, and pine, and fir appear as we approach the tops. In the lower woods the arbutus especially flourishes, and the young wild boars in autumn are said to become half stupefied with its narcotic berries. As we proceed eastward from Galicia to the Asturias the climate becomes sensibly colder—the valleys face the north instead of the west; the orange is less known, the mulberry will not flourish sufficiently well to pay for silk cultivation, the olive will not grow, and the cork does not pay for cultivation; the wines lose somewhat of their strength and lusciousness; and cider, made from the excellent apples of the country, rivals the juice of the grape in popularity. The mountains are covered with heath, and fern, and furze, but the aromatic plants are fewer than in Galicia. This description applies to the northern slope of the Cantabrian chain and to the rolling hills and plateaux of the Basque provinces; but the southern slopes of the chain, towards the Ebro, are again a land of vine and olive, and of maize, which is everywhere the staple. In the Basque provinces the plough is replaced by the ancient "laya," an instrument as old, at least, as Roman times. It is a heavy two-pronged steel or iron fork, with prongs one and a half to two feet long. A strong man will work two of them at once, one in each hand, driving them into the ground to their full depth, then with a backward strain turning up the deep soil. Usually, four or five men work together, and raise their arms, plunge the fork downwards, and heave, in perfect time. The cultivation thus effected is excellent, but the expenditure of labour is immense The productions do not vary greatly along the slopes of the Pyrenees from those above described until we reach Catalonia; but in the lower valley of the Ebro, where rain is rare, in the Bardeñas reales of Navarre, and in the monegros, or despoblados of Aragon, we meet with a phenomenon only too frequent in Spain—tracts of almost utter barrenness. The Bardeñas reales are low spurs of the Pyrenees, with table-lands, bluffs, and deep gorges, and these could scarcely be brought under cultivation; but the "despoblados" (dispeopled lands) of Aragon might be irrigated, either by the Ebro or by its tributaries, if the water of the canal of Charles V. were but economically applied. The sterility of some parts seems to have been the slow result of an oppressive land tenure; for as Don Vicente de la Fuente has remarked, the lands which belonged to the ancient señors (the feudal lords) lie barren, while the lands of the comunidades, the free districts, are still fertile. In treating, of the cultivation and the products of eastern and southern Spain two facts become evident at once—how many of the products are exotic, and how much of the cultivation is still Arabian. We shall see in another chapter how deep a mark the Moor or Arab has left on the population and toponymy of Spain; and the agriculture of the greater part of central and southern Spain is still Arabian. The methods of the Spanish peasant are almost all Arabian; often he uses the Arabian hoe in preference to the Roman plough. The noria, or water-wheel; the sha'doof, or swipe, the pole and bucket for lifting water; the huge dams and reservoirs, the canals and ditches (acequias), the regulations for the fair distribution of the water,—all these, and even the very superstitions as to times of sowing, the rotation of crops, the treatment of his animals—for all these the Spanish peasant of the South is indebted to the Moors. The treatise of Abu Zaccaria, with its traditions of Nabathean agriculture, is still one of the manuals of agriculture in Spain. It is the Moors, too, who first made the winter gardens in the sands near San Lucarde Barameda, at the mouth of the Guadalquiver, and which supply Cadiz and Seville with the earliest and latest vegetables. The Roman, with his lofty aqueducts, brought water to the towns; but it was the Moor who gave that blessing to the thirsty soil of the country districts of Spain. And not only the methods of agriculture, but many of its fruits and products were introduced by the Arab from the East, and some of these are now the very staple of Spanish produce. It is they who brought into Spain the cotton plant, rice, and the sugar-cane; mulberries, both for fruit and for silk culture; sesame, the caper, the locust bean, the castor-oil plant, alfalfa (lucerne), the pomegranate, almond, the walnut and filbert, the chestnut and the ever-green oak, the wild olive, the jujube, the pistacchio nut, the palm, several kinds of roses, the wall-flower, with many another garden herb or flower. It was they who improved the Andalusian steed into one of the most excellent in Europe for riding, and the strain may still be traced even in the ponies of the north. But the cultivated vegetation of the south which meets the stranger's eye is perhaps still more indebted to the Americas.1 It needs an effort now to picture what Spanish agriculture and what Spanish life was before the time of Columbus, when maize, and the potato, and sweet potato, were unknown; when not a cigar was smoked or cigarette made, or leaf of tobacco grown in Spain; when only garlic was known, and those indispensable condiments of every dish, the tomato, and the pimentos had not yet entered a Spanish kitchen, and chocolate had not yet been sipped by Spanish ladies; when the hedges were bare of aloes, and the prickly pear gave the beggar no fruit. And besides these common gifts, there are the more luxurious ones of pine apples, grenadines (the fruit of the passion-flower), abocado pears, chirimoyas, guavas, earth-nuts, bananas, and many others, while the gardens are enriched with magnolias and passion-flowers, and a wealth of creepers of all kinds. The Australian eucalypti, also, are highly valued in Spain, both as a febrifuge and for their prophylactic qualities in prevention of malaria in marshy ground; and a decoction from their leaves has quite passed into the popular pharmacopeia.

The most common plant on the sun-dried hills of Valencia and Murcia, the esparto-grass (Stipe tenacissima), after having been long used in various native manufactures, has since 1856 become an article of exportation, and an important addition to the wealth of Spain; but the cultivation of the barilla plant for soda has much decreased. It is from Valencia that the oranges come which are such favourites in Paris. The tree is so valuable, both for fruit and flowers, that an acre will sometimes give 600l. worth of produce. The dried raisins and almonds so familiar in England, so eagerly looked for at Christmas time, and the green preserved grapes, come from the districts of which we are now speaking, the coast-lands from Valencia to Almeira and Malaga. The wines are equally celebrated, from the strong red wines of Benicarlo, near the frontiers of Catalonia, to the sweet wines of Alicante and of Malaga, which are preferred by Continental taste to the drier and more fiery sherries, wines of the Guadalquiver valley, which please the English palate. Near the coast on the lower grounds, wherever there is sufficient water, rice is grown; but, on account of the unhealthy character of the cultivation, its culture is forbidden in the neighbourhood of towns. Sugar-cane is extending on the southern coast. In Andalusia alone more than 7000 acres are devoted to this culture, and the total yield of the sugar-cane in Spain is estimated at nearly 20,000 tons. Palms are grown as an ornament and garden-tree from Barcelona to Malaga, but in Murcia, and especially at Elche, they are planted for production. Though the number seems declining, there are still some 40,000 palms together in the neighbourhood of Elche; in the last century they are said to have numbered from 50,000 to 70,000. It is not for the fruit alone, the date, but for the leaves (the so-called palm-branches) that the trees are grown. In the winter these are tied into a close bundle to exclude the rays of the sun, in order that they may become white, and they are then exported to Rome and Italy, for use in the Easter ceremonies of Palm Sunday. Oils and essences, extracted from many plants and flowers, are also products of this region. The liquorice-root, and many another flower, or fruit, or root of medicinal value grows wild on the hills. The slopes of the eastern mountains are covered with aromatic herbs, thyme, myrtle, box, rosemary, southern-wood, mint, lavender, marjoram, nearly all the sweet-scented herbs which were once carefully cultivated in the gardens of our ancestors, are natives of these hills; and the flocks of goats returning from their pastures bring the sweet odours into the tainted towns and villages, and the first draught of milk from them is highly flavoured thereby. On these treeless hills, and the warmer parts of the higher plateaux, these aromatic herbs are often the only fuel which the peasant can employ. The wealth of this portion of the Spanish soil, the variety and beauty of its products, can be best seen in a visit to a fruit or flower market in any of the towns of the south and east. The richness of colour, the size and beauty of form, are amazing to the stranger; but the quantity and the cheapness, the way in which these fruits and exotic vegetables enter into the diet of the poor, is that which most astonishes those from less generous climes. We have not space to enumerate in detail a tithe of these productions; this must be sought in more special treatises.

Almost equal in agricultural and garden wealth to that of the coast-line, and superior to it as regards the culture of the vine, is the valley of the Guadalquiver. The oranges of Seville (the civil oranges of our forefathers, the main ingredient of marmalade), sack, and sherry, are known in every English home of the middle and upper classes. It is in the valley of the Guadalquiver, from San Lucar de Barameda to above Cordova, that the finest sherries are produced. From San Lucar comes the pleasant Manzanilla, the lightest and most wholesome of all the sherries, but with a peculiar bitter taste and bouquet, like that of the wild camomile-flower. In the neighbourhood of Jerez de la Frontera the best sherries are produced, both brown and golden; the Amontillado, the nutty-flavoured wine so much sought after, comes from Montilla, to the south of Cordova. Several other kinds are manufactured, and have a great local reputation. Comparatively very little of these strong and fiery wines is consumed in Spain. Spaniards take them only as a liqueur, not as the usual accompaniment of a meal or desert. Sherry, though grown in Spain, is the foreigner's, and especially the Englishman's wine. The red Valdepeñas, from the northern slope of the Sierra Morena, replaces it at the Spaniard's table. For the modes of preparation of the various sherries, we must refer our readers to special treatises; of its statistics as an article of commerce we shall speak in another chapter. The first palm-tree introduced into Spain is said to have been planted near Cordova. The olives of this district are considered the finest in Spain. Comparatively little of the oil is exported, but the home consumption is enormous. The cork forests, too, are abundant; their bark forms an important article of commerce.

We have now only to speak of the great central plateau, the Continental climate of Spain, and its productions. This is peculiarly the corn-growing district of Spain, the land of wheat and maize, especially in the Castiles. Estremadura and Léon are rather pastoral districts. It is in these provinces that the laws of the Mesta, for the protection of the celebrated merino sheep, ruled supreme, and which, though modified at the close of the last century, and some of their worst abuses done away with, were finally repealed only in 1835. By these laws the sheep and cattle which fed in the winter in the plains of Estremadura, and in the summer on the mountains of Léon, were privileged to enter almost any property on their line of march, to feed or to pass the night there. A space of ninety yards wide was reserved on each side of the highways for their accommodation; no land, especially no corn-field, was allowed to be enclosed; and right of forcible entrance was given to all orchards and vineyards where pasturage might be found. Wherever the flocks had once fed, the land could not be sold or alienated to any other purpose. The shepherds who tended these flocks became almost as savage and ignorant as the beasts they looked after; their privileges produced in them a contempt and hatred of all kinds of fixed property, and they were ever trying to extend their oppressive right at the expense of the more settled and agricultural portion of the community. Under the influence of these laws Estremadura, which, in the time of the Romans and Moors had been one of the richest provinces of Spain, became under their Christian conquerors not only one of the poorest and most thinly peopled districts, but also a curse and source of destruction to the rest. Not only were all the evils of the old Roman "latifundia" reproduced in this mediæval system, but the locust, which never breeds in cultivated lands, or where the plough passes, was enabled to make its home in the wilds and pastures of Estremadura, whence it periodically sallied out to devastate the fairest and richest portions of the land. In the years 1754 to 1757 it desolated the whole of the provinces between Estremadura and the Mediterranean. In 1686 and the following year it reached the principality of Barcelona, and, in spite of exorcisms, ravaged the country till there was nothing more to destroy. The provinces nearer to Estremadura are much more frequent sufferers, and in recent years (in 1876 the crops in Ciudad Real were utterly destroyed) a division of the army has been more than once employed to destroy or to check them on their march. The only plant they spare is the tomata, which they will not touch. Besides flocks, Estremadura maintains huge herds of swine, which feed on the sweet acorns and chestnuts of its woods, and whose flesh is renowned through Spain. Owing to its situation on the borders of Andalusia, in which province the Moors retained their powers long after they had lost the rest of Spain, Estremadura was exposed to their frequent incursions; every flock and herd was liable to be carried off, every fruit-tree to be cut down, the farms burnt and crops destroyed; and in their retaliation the Christian knights were almost as fatal as the Arab horsemen. The country was never thoroughly peopled after the reconquest, and the sense of insecurity remained long after the cause of it had been removed. The laws of the Mesta and the emigration to the Americas (both Cortes and Pizarro were Extrameños) finished the work of depopulation, and left the province, as it has since remained, naturally one of the richest, actually one of the poorest in Spain. The products, besides those above mentioned, are cork, oak-bark and acorns for tanning, honey, nuts, and chestnuts.

The bare plains of the Castiles are now the great corn-producing country of Spain. But they have little or nothing of the beauty and variety of cultivated land in other countries. There is no succession of crops, no mixed husbandry, no scattered farm-houses, neither tree nor fence to break the bare monotony. The hill-sides and mountains are given up to pasture, the plains to wheat and maize. The husbandmen live in villages, and ride out on donkeys in early morn to their distant fields, and return home at night. A sense of insecurity seems still to brood over the land, as if the peasant dared not trust himself outside the walls of village or town. Only at harvest-time, in the warm summer and autumn nights, he camps out among his crops, to thresh them on the spot, and bring the produce home, a habit which often produces fever and ague. Year after year the process is repeated; no improvement is ever made; if rain falls the harvest is plentiful—so plentiful sometimes that the lazy peasant will not reap his most distant fields, or procure new skins or barrels for the over-abundant wine, though with the extension of railways this evil is fast disappearing. There is hardly a greater contrast than between the habits of the Castilian peasants and those of the peasant-proprietors in the Basque provinces and in those of north and north-west. In the Basque provinces the farms are scattered all over the country, and travellers from other districts of Spain speak of the whole district as if it were one city. The farm-house stands in the midst of its grounds, with orchard, garden, trees and fences, meadow and corn-land round it. To Englishmen this description is almost a matter of course, and one must read the narrative of travellers from Castile fully to appreciate the force of the contrast. There is, moreover, no natural impediment whatever to a similar course of life in many districts of the Castiles. Barren and dreary as they look, the plains called the "Sierras de Campos," and some others, are watered by a kind of natural capillary attraction; dry as the surface appears, water is always to be found at a few inches below the surface, and the roots of the wheat and other cereal crops penetrate to it. It is only the mixture of pride and laziness and ignorance of the Castilian peasant, his senseless disdain of all improvement, his want of ambition for anything better, that prevents progress in this part of Spain. He refused to make use of the machinery invented for him in the last century, nor will he avail himself of the means of irrigation and the still better machines provided for him now. Yet there is no agricultural country in which machinery could be introduced to greater advantage.

Perhaps no better idea can be given of the productions of Spain, and of the diversity of its climates and fruits, than by comparing those of Murcia with those of the north-west and the centre. In January the bean is in flower in Murcia, in April in Madrid; the vine and the wheat flower in April in Murcia, but not till May or June in the province of Madrid. The climate of Galicia, with its almost continual rain, and Murcia with its droughts, are perhaps the most opposite climates of Spain. The one is a land of pasture and of flax cultivation; its fruits are the apple, the pear, the peach, strawberries, currants, and nuts of all kinds; the predominant plant on the hill-sides is the furze, in Murcia it is the Esparto grass. The fruits there cultivated in the gardens are exotic, and have almost wholly replaced the indigenous flora; the "huertas," the gardens or cultivated plains, are there almost like oases in a desert.

The fauna of Spain—except in one particular, the monkeys (Macacus Innuus) which inhabit the rock of Gibraltar, and which are the only animals of their kind wild in Europe—does not greatly differ from that of the rest of Southern Europe. In the highest part of the Pyrenees, in the Sierra de Credos, and in the Sierra Nevada, the izard or chamois still exists in considerable numbers. Whether the bouquetin is really extinct, or still survives in the Spanish Pyrenees, is a disputed point. In the forests which clothe the lower spurs, roe and fallow deer, wild goats and wild boars, and in some districts red deer, are still to be found. The beasts of prey are the bear, the wolf, the lynx, the fox, wild cat, marten, ferret, weasel, &c.; and these are assisted by the no less rapacious birds of prey—the vultures, eagles, hawks, falcons, kites, harriers, pies, and jays. The game birds and animals are the pheasant, now very rare, partridges of both kinds, bustards, both large and small, sand-grouse, quails, which come in immense quantities to the vineyards and maize-fields in the summer and autumn, woodcock, snipe; wild duck, geese, all kinds of water-birds and waders, visit the marshes of the rivers and the lagoons of the coast in winter; and on the southern shores meet the flamingoes, pelicans, spoonbills, and other birds from the African coast. From the same quarter come numerous and brighter-plumaged birds of passage; orioles, bee-eaters, hoopoes, and other natives of a warmer zone, are brought over by the hot south wind so irritating to the nerves and temper of a southern Spaniard. It is then that the shores of the Mediterranean are lined with sportsmen, when the moon is near full, to take heavy toll of these winged travellers. The entomology of Spain is probably very rich. We have spoken of the locusts of Estremadura; and in the wilds where they breed—mere solitudes in summer, when the flocks are absent in their northern pastures—many a rare species of butterfly, cicada, and insect is doubtless to be found. The insects of Spain, however, are not all noxious or without value. Silk-worms are largely bred in the coast provinces of the east and south, not only for their silk, but also for the gut so precious to all trout and salmon fishermen. The cochineal insect, which feeds on the leaves of the prickly pear, is cultivated for its brilliant dye.

Of useful and domesticated animals, the sheep of Spain have always been celebrated; the very name, "merinos," has been given to the softest kind of wool or woolly tissue. It is said that the breed attained its excellence through a present of English South Down rams by Edward I. to the father of his Castilian bride, and that the wool has improved under climatic influences. However this may be, the superiority has hardly been maintained, and careless shepherding has sadly deteriorated the breed; still the half-bred Spanish merinos are the favourite flocks throughout the north of Spain and Southern France, and they are slowly superseding the coarser native and local breeds. The Spanish cattle from Galicia are well known in the English market, but they are not the choicest of their kind. The bulls that are bred for the bull-fights are reared chiefly along the marshy banks of the Guadalquiver, which, like the delta of the Rhone, supports herds of half-wild cattle and buffaloes. Cow's milk is little known or used in many districts of Spain, and butter still less. Sheep or goat's milk supplies the place of the former, and the olive-oil, excellent were it not too often kept till rancid, that of the latter. Cheese and various kinds of curdled milk or whey are also made from the milk of sheep. Since the advent of the Arabs the Andalusian steed has been much celebrated. It is now scarcely equal to its former fame, but, like many a horse of warmer climes, its performances are better than its looks; hardy, sure-footed, swift, and docile, if not over-weighted it will do more than one of many a finer-looking but less enduring breed. The horse, however, is not the true beast of burden in Spain; he is the charger, or the luxury of the rich. The real work of the country is done by the humble mule or ass, or, in some districts, by the ox. The fine Spanish mules are now seldom bred in the country, but are procured from Poitou, or from the south of France, where great attention is paid to their production, and where the average price of a mule of six months old is higher than that of a horse of the same age. For long journeys, and for carrying produce over the mountain paths, or along the bad roads of the interior, the mule and pack-saddle is still generally used. In fact, in some districts no other mode of conveyance is possible; but the loss to commerce from want of better communications is immense. It is this mode of carriage which necessitates and continues the use of the tarred wine-skin, by which so much excellent wine is rendered unsalable and almost undrinkable. It is hard to recognize the delicious wine when tasted at the vineyard, in the pitch-flavoured, half-fermented liquor which has travelled for days in a skin exposed to the sun's heat by day, and the closeness and fetid odours of the inns by night. Besides these, the camel, buffalo, and llama, and vicunâ have been introduced successfully as an experiment for breeding, but not in sufficient numbers to affect the means of transport in the peninsula.