584 



FARMERS' REGISTER— HEDGES— THE MESTA. 



March the shepherde have much to do with the 

 lambs: they cut the tails, mark the nose with a hot 

 iron, and saw ofl'the points of the horns. When 

 the time a|!proaches lor the flocks to depart for the 

 mountains, ihey indicate their desire to migrate 

 by their resllessness, and by tlieir endeavors to es- 

 c-i'-e. Th'^ sh'^nrin'.r takes place in the month of 

 May, during the summer journey. Tliis business 

 is introduced with much of preparation and cere- 

 mony, and the intervals of the labor are cheered 

 by a" great deal of jollity and merry-making. The 

 Bhcaring is performed under cover. The animals 

 are previously put into a building consisting of two 

 apartments, from four to eight hundred paces long 

 and one hundred wide. As many of the sheep as 

 are to be sheared the following day are taken in 

 the evening into a narrow, long, low hut, called 

 the sioeating-hou>ie, where, being much crowded 

 too-ether, they perspire freely, which renders the 

 wool softer and more easy to be cut. This is one 

 of the practices the Spaniards appear to have de- 

 rived from the Romans. One hundred and twen- 

 ty-five men are usuall}^ employed for shearing a 

 thousand ewes, and two hundred for a thousand 

 wethers. Each sheep affords four kinds of wool, 

 more or less fine according to the parts of the ani- 

 mal whence it is taken. The rams yield more 

 wool than the ewes, but not of so fine a quality; 

 three rams or five ewes afford twenty-five pounds. 

 The wool is sorted and washed before being sent 

 away. The sheep that have been sheared are 

 carried to another place and marked; and those 

 which, in the course of the individual inspection 

 they undergo on this occasion, are found to have 

 lost their teeth, are set apart to be lulled for mut- 

 ton. . 



The journey which the flocks make in their mi- 

 gration is regulated by particular laws and immemo- 

 rial customs. The sheep pass unmolested over 

 the pastures belonging to the villaoes and the 

 commons which lie in their road, and have aright 

 to feed on them. They are not, however, allow- 

 ed to pass over cultivated lands, but the proprietors 

 of such lands are obliged to leave for them a path 

 of about eighty-four yards in breadth. When 

 they traverse the commonable pastures, they sel- 

 dom travel more than six miles a dav; but when 

 they walk in close order through the cultivated 

 fields, they often proceed upwards of eighteen 

 miles, and they have sometimes been known to go 

 twenty-five or thirty miles in one day, in order to 

 reach "a convenient place for halting. The whole 

 of their journey is usually an extent of from 360 

 to 420 miles, which they perform in thirty or thir- 

 ty-five days. Popular opinion in Spain attributes 

 the superiority of the wool in the Merino to these 

 periodical migrations; but this appears to be dis- 

 proved by the fact that the wool of the stationary 

 sheep is sometimes equally good, and still more 

 by the very great superiority of the wool of the 

 German Merino, which does not migrate at all. 

 The number of the migratory sheep in Spain is at 

 present estimated at 10,000,000, and of the sta- 

 tionary at 8,000,000. 



The existence of the system which we have 

 been describing is considered to consti1|gJ^ a great 

 bar to agricultural improvement in Sjjain. The 

 mesta, of which we have already spoken, has a 

 code of peculiar laws, administeredby four judges, 

 whose jurisdiction extends to all matters that are 

 in any degree connected with the mesta, and who 



take particular care than none of its privileges 

 shall be infringed. Among the evils which the 

 system prodiices, it is complained that the forty or 

 fifty thousand persons employed in attending the 

 sheep are lost to the state, as to the purposes of 

 agriculture and population, as they scarcely ever 

 marry; — that a vast quantity of good land is con- 

 verted into pasturage, and produces comparatively 

 nothing; — that great damage is committed with 

 impunity to the cultivated lands during the jour- 

 neys of the flocks — and this is so much the more 

 injurious as, at the time of the first journey, the 

 corn is considerably advanced in its growth, and 

 at the second, the vines are loaded with grapes; — 

 that the commonable pastures also are so com- 

 pletely devastated by the migratory flocks, that 

 the sheep of the resident po|)u!ation can hardly 

 pick up a subsistence; — and that the flocks of the 

 mesta are of no use in an agricultural point of 

 view, f(jr, as they are never folded upon arable 

 land, they contribute nothing to its fertilization. 

 Besides this, the directors and shepherds are 

 dreaded in every place to which they come, lor 

 they exercise a most intolerable despotism — the 

 consequence of the improper privilege which they 

 possess of bringing whoever they may choose to 

 insult beibre the tribunal of the mesta, whose de- 

 cisions are almost invariably in favor of its ser- 

 vants. The existence of the mesta has therefore 

 long been a subject of public complaint and re- 

 monstrance, and even the general states of the 

 realm have been continually requesting the sup- 

 pression of it. For a long series of years these 

 appeals were made in vain, but about the middle 

 of the last century the government felt itself 

 obliged to pay some attention to the subject. A 

 committee of inquiry was therefore appointed to 

 take the matter into consideration, but the influ- 

 ence of the mesta prevailed in the committee and 

 elsewhere; so that though the commission is still, 

 vv'e believe, understood to exist, it has not yet 

 given its opinion on the subject of the mesta, or 

 j)roposed any remedy for the evils it produces. 



"The Merino, or Spanish breed of sheep, was 

 introduced into this country [England] about the 

 close of last century. George HI. v/as a great 

 patron of this breed, which was, for several }ears, 

 a very great tavorite. But it has been ascertained 

 that, though the fleece docs not much degenerate 

 here, the carcass, which is naturally ill-formed, 

 and affords comparatively little weight of meat, 

 does not improve; and as the farmer, in the kind 

 of sheep which he keej;s, must look not only to 

 the produce of the wool, but also to the butcher- 

 market, he has found it his interest to return to the 

 native breeds of his own country and abandon the 

 Spanish sheep. They have, however, been of 

 considerable service to the flocks of England, 

 having been judiciously crossed with the South 

 Down, Ryeland, &c." The Merino was intro- 

 duced into most of the other countries of Euroj)e, 

 in the course of the last century, with very various 

 success. It has also at later periods been carried 

 oat to New South Wales, Van Diemen's Lund, 

 the Cape of Good Hope, and the United Stales; 

 and it seems now to have been sufficiently estab- 

 lished that, wherever the animal has been attend- 

 ed to for the sake of its wool, it will afibrd good 

 wool, but that the quality of the wool deteriorates 

 when that of the mutton becomes an object.. 



