Delmar.] 



306 



[Jan. 15, 



poi'tant ; for it rendered possible intercommunication and commercial 

 dealings between the various provinces of Spain which, under the old sys- 

 tem, were almost imijossible. There were arrobas and fmiegas and fane- 

 gadas in all the provinces, but no two were of like value, and they differed 

 enormously. The fanegada, which contained 576 estadales carres in Cas- 

 tile, contained from 100 to 625 in the other provinces, and the aramada, 

 which contained 400 in Castile, contained from 300 to 600 elsewhere. 

 (Von Baumhauer.) With an illiterate population, such a diversity of 

 terms was tantamount to an almost entire prohibition of intercourse 

 between the provinces. 



Total Area of Country. 

 In the Spanish statistical tables, Spain is usually meant to embrace the 

 Balearic and Canary Isles. The following table gives the total superfices: 



Cultivated Area at Various Dates. 



I have before me nine different accounts of the cultivated area of 

 Spain at four different periods, viz. : 1. The account of Miguel Ozorio y 

 Rediu, who wrote in the last half of the seventeenth century; 2. The 

 official returns for the year 1803; 3. An account from the Junta de Medios, 

 concerning the divisions of land in 1803; 4. A statement laid before the 

 Cortes in 1808; and 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9, various accounts relative to the 

 divisions of land from the year 1857 to the present time. Of these 

 accounts the earlier ones have generally been treated by English writers 

 as m.ore or less fanciful ; on the contrary, I believe them, when 

 rightly understood, to be more or less correct. Confusion of the terms, 

 "productive land," "cultivable land," "cultivated land," "arable 

 land," "area sown in grain," and "area in which grain is sown, " as well 

 as error in the translation of "fanegadas" and "fanegas" being suf- 

 ficient to account for their apparent discrepancies. 



Selecting the second one, as perhaps the most reliable, we have the 

 following divisions of Spain proper for the year 1803: 



