Scrub 
(Laurus nobilis), and there is a rich undergrowth of 
Rhododendron ponticum.? 
Unfortunately we have no means of studying the vege- 
tation as it was in the days of Romulus and Remus, or 
when Hercules started on his tour of the Mediterranean. 
But the character of the usual Mediterranean agri- 
culture, and the enormous time that has elapsed since 
man and his domestic animals first settled in those 
beautiful and sunny lands, are quite enough to explain 
the present flora. 
There is also some evidence which can be obtained 
from historical sources, There were, ¢g. (1550-1600 
A.D.), 30,000,000 sheep in Spain alone. They were kept 
in enormous flocks, and travelled every year from their 
summer pastures in the north to their winter quarters 
in the Val de Alondia, returning northwards in spring. 
That same system prevailed in late Roman times in 
Southern France, and is of course not unusual in some 
parts of Australia to-day.® 
On the wide plains of Lower Andalusia there are now 
only little thorny bushes of Genista, scented Labiates, 
esparto steppes, or dwarf palms. But about the begin- 
ning of the sixteenth century that very district contained 
vast fields of wheat, as well as olive and mulberry plan- 
tations. The change is set down by historians to the 
expulsion of the Moors by Philip II. and his successors. 
Slave-labour is particularly convenient in such a 
country as this, and Moorish slaves may have made 
cultivation possible in places where nothing could be 
done without slave labour. 
In Braunton Great Field one can also see what must 
have closely resembled the present methods very often 
used in the Mediterranean. 
The land which is under cultivation is often terraced, 
carefully irrigated, and painfully laboured over, Through- 
3°9 
