GENERAL. 17 



and is known to the wool buyers as ' carretilla,' or small 

 burr. 



In the Banda Oriental, Entre-Eios, and Santa Fe, there 

 are very good sheep lands, some few of which can be com- 

 pared to those of Buenos Ayres ; the coarser lands, however, 

 will improve under judicious stocking. In the province 

 of Buenos Ayres, without the radius spoken of, there are 

 lands which have the same disadvantages as those of Entre- 

 Eios, &c. The grasses are somewhat coarse and strong, 

 and in many parts of all the above-mentioned provinces 

 they are so much so as to be quite unfit in their present 

 state for sheep, and will be so until they have been well 

 stocked with cattle or fired ; the seed-sheaths and stems 

 of the grass, known as the ' flechilla,' or arrow-grass, which 

 abound in certain districts, adhering to the wool and mat- 

 ting it, also working their way through the skin of the 

 sheep into the very flesh. This ' flechilla ' is well known 

 in Australia. 



Around the large towns there is generally a radius 

 dedicated to agricultural purposes ; outside this, for a 

 number of leagues, say forty or fifty, in the province of 

 Buenos Ayres, the lands for the most part are devoted to 

 sheep pastures ; beyond them again, the cattle estabhsh- 

 ments predominate, the advance of sheep-farming gra- 

 dually and steadily driving back the cattle to greater 

 distances, and on to the coarser grasses. The latter, eating 

 down the coarser herbage, fit the land for the reception of 

 sheep, and I have little doubt that, in due course, many 

 tracts of country, at present unsuitable for sheep, will 

 become equal to those now esteemed as the best. 



The soil in the province of Buenos Ayres, parts of 

 Entre-Eios, and Santa Fe, is a deep rich alluvium, that 

 rests on a subsoil of siliceous clay, as the rule, without so 

 much as a single stone or pebble. In the lower lands, 



c 



