ON SPANISH AGRICULTURE. 225 



Ploughing, or what passes muster as such— a tickling of 

 the surface by tiny wooden ploughshare identical with 

 those of Eoman days, drawn by yokes of tardy-plodding 

 oxen — takes place in autumn. Wheat is sown in De- 

 cember, the seed scattered broadcast, and one-third of the 

 land laid fallow each year. The fallows (manchones) in 

 spring produce wildernesses of weeds, as tall and rank 

 as the corn itself, and gorgeous with wild-flowers — 

 Elysian fields for the bustards, which revel amidst the 

 ripening seeds and legions of locusts and grasshoppers. 

 Here whole acres glow with crimson trefoil, contrasting 

 with the blue borage and millions of convolvuli : there 

 are lilies and balsams, asphodel, iris, and narcissi of every 

 hue — but it is idle to attempt to describe the unspeakable 

 floral beauties of the Spanish manchon. 



The fallows are not, however, left to waste their substance 

 entirely on weeds and wild-flowers, for they form the best 

 spring-grazing grounds for cattle, and thus, too, receive a 

 certain allowance of manure. 



One's patience is exercised to watch the tardy oxen 

 creeping along those league-long furrows ! Even in our 

 English corn-lands, in the fifty-acre fields of Norfolk or 

 Northumberland, there appears to our non-technical eyes 

 a grievous disproportion between the work to be done and 

 the means employed, albeit a dozen stout draughts may be 

 at work in a single field. Here, where the "field " stretches 

 away unbroken by fence or hedge to the horizon, a day's 

 journey in either direction for those plodding oxen, the 

 task truly appears more hopeless than the labours of 

 Sisyphus. Not even on the prairies of Western America 

 can they boast a longer furrow than can be traced on 

 these plains of tawny, treeless Spain. Well may the 

 ploughman seek, by chanting old-time ditties, to avoid 

 utter vacuity of mind. 



In June and July the harvest is gathered in — no 

 musical rattle of reaper, for the sickle still holds its place : 

 and over the breadth of fallen swathe soar hawks of every 

 sort and size, preying on the locusts and other large insects 

 and reptiles now deprived of their accustomed covert. 



Q 



