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