358 Notes and Gleanings. 



named, almost all kinds of fruit are cultivated to a greater or less extent ; but 

 I can only speak of a few of the early sorts from my own observation. Straw- 

 berries, that begin to ripen in April, are very good : a small kind resembling 

 the red-wood is most generally cultivated ; although some of the large sorts, 

 both red and white, are also grown. Apricots are plenty. Cherries of two or 

 three varieties are very good. Figs flourish very luxuriantly ; and the large pur- 

 ple kind, ripening in early June, aie very luscious and sweet. Pears are said to 

 be very good ; but I have only seen some of the small early sorts. Apples are 

 also raised, and peaches. The peaches generally grown are clingstone varie- 

 ties, and not good ; but where fine kinds have been obtained, as in Grenada, they 

 are very good. Pomegranates are raised quite extensively ; and alm.onds are, I 

 believe, an article of export. 



The flora of Spain is very rich and various. The sides of the roads and 

 fields are strewed with flowers of a great variety of kinds and colors, and gen- 

 erally, as it seemed to me, of more than usually bright and brilliant hues. I do 

 not know enough of botany to be able to identify more than a very few of those 

 that I saw ; and of those I can now remember but a part. Among others, I no- 

 ticed a variety of aloe, throwing up a flower-stalk ten or twelve feet high, with 

 blossoms ; and the prickly pear, large bushes in size, some with yellow, and others 

 with orange-colored flowers ; both these plants being used for hedges. There was 

 what appeared to be a thistle, with a brilliant blue flower, that I had never be- 

 fore seen, and patches of what I took for heath, some with purple and others 

 with white blossoms. A low plant, whose flower somewhat resembled those of 

 the petunia, the tube in some cases light-purple or pink, in others pure white, 

 with, in still other cases, the white flower having on its edge a deep border of 

 bright blue, was very common ; and a tall-growing broom with yellow flowers 

 was frequently met with. What is called the caper-plant bears a flower having 

 some resemblance to the passion-flower. Among shrubs, the pomegranates, 

 often small trees in size, covered with scarlet blossoms, and the oleanders, with 

 crimson flowers, often seen in waste places, were quite conspicuous, as were 

 many others to which I now can but thus briefly allude. 



A good deal of the scenery of Spain is dull. The broad, wide, treeless plains, 

 almost destitute of life, with only occasionally a flock of sheep, or herd of cattle, 

 watched by its shepherd or herdsman, seem melancholy and dreary. Yet such 

 is not always the character of its scenery: occasionally, particularly in moun- 

 tainous regions, some that is wild and picturesque may be met with. In the 

 Basque provinces, along or among the lower range of the Pyrenees, the high 

 hills having on their crests the naked rock, thrown up sometimes in peaks or 

 minarets, at others in a continuous wall like the ramparts of a fortress, and 

 the lower ones covered with forests to the summits, groves of fine chestnuts, 

 long, smooth, grassy slopes, and broad, fertile, cultivated valleys, with towns 

 and villages, often combine to form landscapes whose beauty can hardly fail 

 to gratify the most fastidious taste. 



Spain has not, then, as I had perhaps foolishly imagined, been free from 

 change : the influences everywhere operating have not been wholly without 

 effect there. Here, as elsewhere, the last remains of feudalism, and the insti- 



