150 ATTICA. 



Strictly watched, that they could not procure me even a taste of it. 

 The solitary sparrow flew along the walls, and thrushes and black- 

 birds seemed almost unmolested in the olive grounds. 



The following extract from Dr. Sihthorps Journals relating to part of 



Attica may be inserted here. 



" July 24. — We anchored in the port of Sunium. At present this 

 famous promontory of Attica affords neither inhabitants nor cultiva- 

 tion. I saw here partridges, hares, and a small species of black hawk 

 flew frequent near the ground. Our sailors caught two species of the 

 Labrus, different from the L. lulis, which I suspect to be new ; one 

 uncommonly beautiful, with three deep transverse red stripes, called 

 by the Greeks "HX;?. The country about the cape was covered with 

 low mastic bushes, and here and there some scattered trees of the 

 Pinus Pinea, which Chandler seems to have mistaken for cedars; 

 these, though frequently mentioned by that traveller, never grew 

 wild in Greece." — Dr. S. 



Note, from the Earl of Aberdeen's Journal, referred to in page 14i6". 



" Barley is chiefly cultivated in Attica, and the plain of Thria is still somewhat supe- 

 rior in fertility to the other districts of the country. 



" It is the practice to turn the horses out into the green barley.* This is done in the 

 month of May ; at that time the fields are seen full of horses and asses, tied each to a 



* In the spring season, in parts of Syria, the horses are fed forty or fifty days with green bar- 

 ley, cut as soon as the corn begins to ear. The horses of the grandees are frequently tied down 

 in the barley-field, being confined to a certain circuit by a long tedder. Grazing is reckoned to 

 -be of great service to the health of the horses, and produces a beautiful gloss on the skin. Russell's 

 Aleppo, ii. 178. Lucerne is also cultivated for the use of the liorses ; oats are not given to them. 

 Some fields of this grain were observed by Russel about Antioch and on the sea-coast, but they 

 •were not cultivated near Aleppo. Bpipi, or oats, were seen in Boeotia, by Dr. Sibthorp. 



