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emoluments of the successful bullfighter. In their eyes he is the national 

 hero, par excellence, to be admired and applauded in the present and, if 

 possible, to be succeeded in a rosy future. To this day children may be seen 

 playing at bullfights, quite as much as in the days of Velazquez, of which 

 he has left us on canvas a realistic record ; hence, on the approach of man- 

 hood, there are hundreds who endeavor to give effect to the dreams of their 

 childhood, and the threshold of the arena is thronged with would-be espadas. 

 Unfortunately there are but a select few who have all the requisite natural 

 aptitude for the perilous game. The unsuccessful are slow to recognise 

 their hopeless unfitness, and the time comes when they find that whilst 

 they have failed in one vocation they have also lost aptitude and desire 

 to earn their living in any other calling. And in this manner the ranks of 

 the dangerous and unemployable are constantly being recruited. This, 

 I was informed, was one of the social sores of every Andalusian town of any 

 importance. 



THE ANDALUSIAN OLIVE GROVES. 



What the vine is to Southern France the olive tree is to Southern Spain. 

 One traverses here mile upon mile of almost continuous olive groves, and from 

 the railway carriage at times nothing beyond their grey-green livery comes 

 within the range of the traveller's vision. From the outset there arose a 

 point in connection with these Andalusian olive groves which puzzled me 

 much, and it was only after patient cross-examination of many a grower 

 that I succeeded in solving the riddle. Every now and again one meets 

 in these groves what appears to be a young tree protected all round by a 

 conical mound of earth about 5ft. to 6ft. in height. I could not understand 

 why growers should go to the trouble and expense of shovelling up so great 

 a quantity of earth for no particular purpose. City folk appeared to be under 

 the impression that it was a precaution adopted to secure the union of the 

 graft. Such an explanation appeared to me ridiculous on the face of it, 

 as there exist hundreds of cheaper and simpler methods for securing the same 

 result. When I started interviewing growers I was further puzzled by an 

 almost unanimous opinion that olive trees yielded payable crops between 

 their third and fifth year ; here, then, was evidence that in Spain at least 

 olive trees are not planted ou+. by the benevolently inclined for the special 

 benefit of future generations. Ultimately it was by piecing together these 

 two puzzles that I was able to get at the wherefore of this strange practice 



This apparently is what tak.es place. A new olive tree is always started 

 from the shoot, or truncheon, of a wild olive tree, of which apparently many 

 natural groves exist. The term " truncheon," however, is not used here 

 in the sense that we usually attach to it, viz., a shoot 12in. to 18in. long and 

 about lin. to IJin. in diameter. The Spanish truncheon would be more 

 correctly described as a strong limb or branch of a tree. It is 9ft. to 10ft. 



