20 LETTERS ON AGRICULTURE. 



The operations of the farm in southern Spain (Andalusia especially) 

 are exceedingly primitive. Egyptian methods are not so crude in 

 many respects. In some places the subsoil plow seems to be entirely 

 unknown, and I have seen a wheat stubble field of at least 100 acres 

 being worked over by mattocks ; 15 to 20 men were working their way 

 laboriously across the field. 



The absence of cattle is most striking in southern Spain, no fodder 

 except small patches of alfalfa under irrigation being obtainable. In 

 place of cattle, large herds of mixed-bred goats are kept, and every- 

 where their high-tasting milk is served. The only butter used is in the 

 hotels and houses of foreigners, and it is so bad that most foreigners 

 prefer to go without it. Swedish and Danish brands are sold. Consul 

 Ridgely, of Malaga, informed me that the duty on butter from America 

 would have to be lowered before any considerable import could be 

 made. My impression is that it will not be a big market, for the 

 people have gone without butter for so many centuries. 



Farm machinery of American and English make is being imported 

 slowly. The agent in Madrid for an American pump manufacturer 

 told me that his assistant who tried to sell an English reaper in a 

 southern village was mobbed by the laborers and came near losing his 

 life. Thrashing machines of large size are quite out of the question. 

 I am told that the farmers will not combine and buy one, and are so 

 jealous of one another that even a traveling thrashing machine would 

 have a very hard time. Few farmers have enough grain to warrant 

 their purchasing a machine for their own use. The old thrashing floor 

 of Biblical times is in evidence everywhere. Every village has an open 

 space outside the town where thrashing and winnowing by hand are 

 done. I have seen 25 men and 20 mules at work on one of these 

 floors, taking about two weeks to do what a 10-horse thrasher would 

 accomplish in two days ; every farmer with his own stack, thrashing- 

 board, and mule. 



There is one point regarding the thrashing machine which is com- 

 plained of throughout the Levant. It does not crush and break up 

 the straw sufficiently. In Egypt the straw is considered quite as 

 valuable as the wheat, being fed to live stock as "tibbin." The old 

 style of thrashing floor prepares the straw admirably for this stock 

 feeding. Furthermore, the straw-chopping machines known here do 

 not prepare the straw satisfactorily. 



Commercial fertilizers are beginning to be used, but unfortunately 

 spurious imitations have been sold, and they have prejudiced many 

 farmers against them. 



The principal cultures in Spain are the almond and raisin industries 

 of the extreme southeast, the hard wheat of the interior dry regions, 

 the Valencian orange and lemon plains of the northeast coast, and the 

 olive orchards about Sevilla. 



