II.—Chiefly relating to the Sierra.

On a hot May morning we lay beneath the shade of palms and eucalypti in the garden at Jerez, watching the gyrations of Kestrels, Swifts, and Bee-eaters, and lazily listening to the soft bird-chorus—an infinite, space-filling refrain from myriad Nightingales, Serins, and Gold-finches—to the spondee of Hoopoe and dactyl of Quail. Presently there appeared, far overhead, some half-dozen Griffon Vultures wheeling in immense circles, the huge birds dwarfed by the altitude to mere specks. Then another stratum, still higher, was detected, and afterwards a keen eye distinguished a third, and then a fourth, beyond the average range of human vision. How many more tiers of soaring vultures might yet occupy the regions of unseen space beyond, cannot be told: but the incident serves to illustrate the system on which Nature's great scavengers patrol the land. The lower strata we estimated at 800 to 1,000 yards altitude, and these only, it is probable, are on active service, the upper tiers merely standing by, ready to profit by the discoveries of all the working parties that may be in sight beneath them: for at the enormous elevations of the uppermost birds, it is impossible to suppose that even a vulture's eye could detect so small an object as, say, a dead goat on the earth.

Towards a certain point of the evergreen plain of palmetto, there is a visible concentration of soaring forms: thither a string of creaking carros has conveyed to their last resting-place some dead horses, the victims of Sunday's bull-fight. Thither flock the vultures to hold high carnival: and a striking sight it is to watch perhaps forty or fifty, as they soar and wheel in as many opposing, concentric circles, gradually focussing themselves over the point of attraction. But as they fold their wings and gather in a seething mass around the carrion, all that was majestic and imposing disappears—as they tear open the flanks and, with spluttering growls and gurgles, and flapping of huge wings, dive their great bare necks into the innermost penetralia, the spectacle changes to the repulsive. Yet, as the only existing system of scavengers, they are performing a useful office. Quickly swells the crowd: from every quarter come more and more—the heavens seem alive with hurrying forms sweeping down to the banquet. As the earlier arrivals become satiated, they withdraw a few yards from the revels to enjoy the state of rare repletion, perched on a neighbouring tree or hillock, where they sit with distended crop, fluffed-out feathers and half-closed wings, gorged to the last mouthful, but making room for fresh comers, hungry as they had been before. Thus within a few hours the luckless horses have found a tomb, and when the Griffons have left nothing but bare bones, then another feathered scavenger appears, the Neophron, or in Spanish Quebranta-huesos, i.e., the bone-smasher, who sets diligently to work to loosen the ligaments and tear the skeleton asunder. Then, one by one, the bones are carried off and broken by being dropped from a height upon the rocks, when the fragments are devoured: thus the earth is cleansed of corrupting matter.

The Griffons commence repairing their nests as early as January—we have watched them carrying claw-fulls of grass and cut branches from places where charcoal-burners had been lopping the trees, on January 21st; a single large white egg is laid in February, incubation lasts forty days, and a naked, blue-skinned chick is hatched early in April. The young vultures are of extremely slow growth, spending full three months in the nest. By mid-May they are as big as Guinea-fowls: ungainly-looking creatures, all crop and maw, with feathers beginning to show through the thick white down.

Three of these eyries were situate on abrupt, detached stacks of rock, so easily accessible that we almost "walked" into them. Some years afterwards, passing through this sierra on March 1st, we found the three stacks occupied as before, each nest containing a single egg.

Eventually, after dragging the lame beasts some twenty miles, we got clear of the sierra, but found that our absence had caused much anxiety at Jerez. On the outward ride, it had so chanced, we were present at a sad accident by which two men and their nine mules lost their lives, while attempting to cross the swollen Guadalete at the Barca Florida. Consequently we did not attempt the ford, and only reached the sierra after a long detour: but news of the accident having reached Jerez, and our disappearance being unluckily attributed thereto, the curious result was that the first person we met on the vega of Guadalete was honest old Blas, all solemn and dejected, as he endeavoured, by watching the flight of the vultures, to discover our remains!

In Andalucia, as in Eastern Europe, the Neophron occasionally nests upon trees. In the lovely, park-like country half a day's ride eastward of Jerez, several pairs breed yearly on high encinas, or ilex. Here, in spring, we have seen the old vultures on the nest, and in July have observed big young—dark brown fellows—perched on adjoining branches. For instance:—

The choza was a mere hut built of long cañas or reeds, in the form of an extinguisher, the interior being circular, some 15ft. in diameter, occupied by many goats, poultry, and cats—not to mention minor inhabitants, and with a wood fire smouldering in the centre. I had hardly coiled myself in my rug and laid down to sleep on the low mud settee which ran round the back of the den, when a furious outburst of barking took place among the numerous dogs which lay sleeping round the fire. The goatherd opened the door, and there entered an old man, bronze-visaged and wiry, leading behind him a donkey. He was a smuggler, and his packs, crammed with contraband of infinite variety, were soon deposited on the floor, and the donkey hobbled and turned out to find bed and breakfast where it might. Then the cerrones were unpacked, and their multifarious contents displayed on the mud floor—pins, needles and scissors, buttons, and bobbins of thread, tobacco, tape, and sundry kinds of coloured cloth and bright ribbons. The latter at once "fetched" the feminine portion of the community—alas! for the chances of sleep for the weary—female nature is everywhere the same, even in the choza of a goatherd buried amidst these lonely sierras, and bargaining and chatter continued well-nigh throughout the livelong night.

Thus occurred—over twenty years ago—our first introduction to Bonelli's Eagle: since then we have met with them frequently in the southern sierras, in the Castiles, and once in the Biscayan Provinces. It is, in fact, the commonest mountain-breeding eagle in Spain, and is easily recognizable by its short, dappled wings, and by the peculiar feature that the middle of the back is white—thus, if seen from above, the bird appears to have a large white spot between the wings.

In former days, the hill-peasants assert that it bred in quite low rocks, and several such abandoned eyries have been pointed out to us: but we have only seen its nest in the most stupendous rock-walls—places that make one's flesh creep to survey. The two eggs, usually white, but occasionally splashed or spotted, are laid in the early days of February—we have watched these eagles repairing their nest at Christmas. The young in first plumage, like those of the Imperial Eagle, are of a chestnut-tawny hue. The claws of Bonelli's Eagle are remarkably long and powerful, and its chief prey consists of hares, rabbits, and other game. Hares it appears unable to carry up whole to its eyry on the heights, tearing them into halves, and birds found in its nest are usually headless.

The Golden Eagle also breeds in all the mountain-regions of Spain, both in high rocks and occasionally (as above mentioned) on trees. Its nest is often an enormous structure—quite a cartload of sticks.

Our old cazador, Felipe, who has since become keeper on a rabbit and partridge preserve fully twenty miles from the nearest point of the sierra, told us that so many eagles come down to prey on his rabbits during the months of November and December that during the preceding season he had killed over thirty. Felipe added that they were mostly Golden and Bonelli's Eagles (Aguila perdicera he called the latter), with a few Serpent-Eagles earlier in the autumn. At the time of our visit (January) most of the eagles had retired to the sierras to breed: but a few days afterwards Felipe rode in with a cargo which sorely puzzled the officials of the consumos (octroi), for under either arm he bore an eagle, and in a sack on his back were two immense wild-cats! The eagles were A. chrysäetus, and an immature, tawny-breasted Bonelli.

I.—Cereals, Green Crops, etc.

Around Spanish agriculture, as around other Iberian industries, hangs a cloud of almost Oriental apathy. A land which might be one of the granaries of Europe is so neglected that, even with an import duty on corn, it is barely self-supporting—indeed, during 1889, Spain had to pay upwards of one million sterling for imported wheat.

Since the fall of Moorish dominion, the population of Andalucia has fallen to less than half; large areas which in Moorish days were smiling corn-lands, to-day lie barren and unproductive, choked with brushwood—the great southern despoblados, or deserts.

Nearly one-half the entire land of Spain (to be exact, 45·8 per cent.) is without cultivation of any kind; and of the rest, the productive powers are but half utilized. The yield of the best land in a favourable season rarely reaches forty bushels per acre, and the average, taking one year with another, may be placed at twenty; while in Northumberland thirty bushels is an average, and fifty a not infrequent yield.

Oriental customs survive in the hiring of labour, both for field and vineyard. Men are not employed permanently—only "taken on" as occasion requires. A hiring-place is the feature of Spanish rural towns—the Plaza, or public square, usually serving the purpose. Here, at all hours, but notably at early morn and sunset, stand groups of swarthy labourers, waiting for hire, and contentedly smoking their cigarettes till some capataz, or foreman, comes to terms with them.

Corn and wine are cultivated by distinct classes of labourers—those for the vineyard, superior workmen, gaining thrice the pay of the others. In the vineyards the men receive the equivalent of three francs a day, with oil and vinegar—important items in a hot country—while the corn-farmer only pays one franc, with bread and oil.

At the cortijo, or corn-farm, are four or five permanent employés—the steward, the bread-maker, and the tenders of the working oxen. All the rest of the labourers—men or women—are hired temporarily as required. Herdsmen and shepherds we do not include, as these do not live at the farm, but in some reed-built choza, or other rough shelter hard by their flocks. Hence it will be seen that the class of labour employed on arable land is of the lowest—there is none of the inducement to steady industry begotten of permanent place. At the vineyards, in addition to the higher rate of wage, the food supplied is also much superior. This industry, in short, absorbs the pick of the labour-market. No women are employed in the vineyards, nor allowed to touch a vine, though on the farms many are engaged for such work as hoeing and weeding.

To become the capataz of a vineyard is the highest ambition of the labourer. To go into the market-place and hire, instead of standing there to be hired, are obviously very different things. It implies, besides, permanent wages at increased rate, without manual work to do, for the capataz only orders.

Ploughing, or what passes muster as such—a tickling of the surface by tiny wooden ploughshare identical with those of Roman days, drawn by yokes of tardy-plodding oxen—takes place in autumn. Wheat is sown in December, 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.

Then follows the threshing of the corn, an operation which is carried on with the primitive simplicity of the patriarchs of old—perhaps on precisely the same lines. The sheaves are brought from the stubble on creaking bullock-carts, and thrown on the era, or threshing-ground, a hardened level space adjoining the farm. Here it is threshed—or rather, trodden out under foot by the yeguas—brood-mares, a team of which are kept briskly trotting over the circle of outstrewn sheaves, driven on by a man who stands in the centre. With a long whip and the skill of a circus manager, he drives the mares in circles, round and round—this is the only duty asked of the yeguas all the year, except that of maternity. Amidst clouds of dust and heat the sweating animals are urged on till the corn and brittle straw is trodden into finest chaff. Then the mares are rested, the grain and chaff pushed aside to make room for fresh sheaves, and the operation is repeated till all the produce has been trodden out.

The next process is to throw the broken corn high in air with broad wooden shovels. The wind serves to separate the grain from the chaff, the former falling in heaps on the earth, while the lighter material drifts away to leeward. The grain is gathered into sacks, loaded upon donkeys, and away goes the team to the owner's granary in the town: as many as three score, and more, of patient borricos may often at this season be seen plodding along the dusty byeway. Similarly one sees, at the same season, the casks of newly-pressed wine being jolted along on bullock-carts towards the town, along rough roads or tracks that will not be required again till the same traffic occurs after the next year's vintage.

The corn goes to the owner's granary, the wine to his bodega, and all is soon safely housed within the city walls. Nothing, beyond actual necessaries, is left in the country.

The antipathy evinced by Spaniards towards the country is a curious feature of this southern life. No Spaniard, rich or poor, will remain in the country for a single night, even in the green and glorious spring-time when the Andalucian vegas revel in richest charm to eye and ear. The labourers whose work takes them into the campo do their best to get back by night: even the poorest prefer a walk of several miles, morning and evening, rather than remain overnight amidst rustic scenes. Centuries of former insecurity may explain this: but now no present cause can be assigned beyond the force of habit, and perhaps the fear of being overtaken by sudden illness or death beyond the reach of priest—in which case the last rites of religion might not be available.

Whatever be the cause, the country gentleman, the country parson and doctor, Hodge and rural population generally, are unknown in Spain. The landowner hies him townwards at night to his gossip, his paséo and his favourite game of tresillo at the casino—the workman to his village, his wife and bairns in the humble tenement he proudly calls his casa. Spain is a land of customs and accepted traditions—be they good or bad. For centuries no one has sought to introduce a novelty—say a taste for rural life, though the conditions for its enjoyment exist here as favourably, at least, as elsewhere. So far as we can judge, the vesper-bell will continue for all time to gather in the natives to the cities as rookeries unite their flocks when every sun goes down.

Agriculture in Spain is thus deprived of that gracia which in other lands distinguishes it from other commercial pursuits. It is devoid of that loving, homely interest that in England attaches to it, making the cultivation of the soil—at least when conducted (willingly) by the landowner—something of a recreation or "labour of love." Here, nothing beyond elementary and imperative operations are carried on—those which a rule-of-thumb experience has shown to give fairly good results with a minimum of trouble. Experiments are things unknown. There is a settled conviction among the agricultural class that improvement is impossible, that their patriarchal system represents perfection. Reward is looked for rather in a twenty or thirty-fold return once in every four or five years by luck of favouring climatic conditions, than sought to be assured by skill and the adoption of modern modes of tillage.

Corn-growing nevertheless does pay in Spain, owing to the import-duty on foreign grain, which ensures a profit to the home-producer. But fortunes realized on the cortijo are always ascribed rather to a run of good luck than to any other specific cause.

He would be a bold man who departed from the traditional systems in vogue since time began, in this land where "whatever is is best." And a strange fatality does await experimental changes. The very soil seems to repel innovation. A firm of practical English agriculturists failed signally some thirty years ago, and one still hears it satirically told how the deep-searching iron ploughshares from Inglaterra left offended fields which for years afterwards refused to yield a crop.

Much could easily be done to bring Spanish farming nearer to European standards. Improvements will come, one day or another: already the dawn of a more active industrial life is beginning to glimmer. But as yet the flutter extends only to manufactures, not to agriculture. Capitalists are beginning to furnish their factories with the appliances of modern machinery, and Spanish workmen are found capable of adapting themselves, by their intelligence and attention, to the new conditions, and to bear a fair comparison with the workmen of other countries.

The wave of progress is at present confined to the foundry, the mine, and the workshop, but will some day, perhaps, extend to the campo—substitute the steam-plough and reaper for the sluggish ox-team and sickle, the steam-thrasher for the trotting brood-mares, and metamorphose into an active industry the present drowsy, old-world routine of Spanish agriculture.

The Olive.

These two kinds are carefully gathered in late autumn, and are in universal demand throughout the Peninsula. Beyond its boundaries they are little known or appreciated, though some few have already found consumers in the north of Europe.

Its substantial qualities, and in particular its power of long sustaining light, are appreciated in Russia, where it is superseding the oils of other countries for its reliable illumination of the icons, or sacred lamps. The religious tenets of the Muscovites require that these small lamps, suspended before their images, should burn brightly, without trimming, through the longest winter nights of eighteen or twenty hours. The little glass tumblers of the icons are filled to the brim with Spanish oil: a perforated metal bar placed across, holds the lightly-twisted cotton wick, and once lighted the little lamp burns brightly, without smoke or attention, through the longest nights of the northern winter.

At present the preparation and export of Spanish oil is almost monopolized by the port of Malaga.

Horse-Breeding and Live Stock.

For temper and enduring powers the old Spanish hack could never be improved upon; but in shape and make the race had sadly degenerated since the Spanish Gennet was the favourite and fashionable steed of the wealthy both in France and England. The heavy Flemish stallions introduced by Carlos Quinto—of which Velasquez' pictures give us the type—account for this falling-off from the earlier form of that high-bred Arab race which long ago supplied the wants of a nation of horsemen—the Caballeros, whose interests in life were coloured and directed by a devotion to knight-errantry unparalleled in other lands, and which still leaves its impress on the thought and habit of the Hidalgos of to-day.

Now, however, the Andalucian horse bids fair to regain his ancient prestige; some of the more ambitious haras boast their strings of pedigree-stock, and the stud-book of Spain is an established institution, its register having been zealously kept till this year, by the sportsman-grandee, the late Duke of Fernan Nuñez.

Of the fine description of Spanish merino sheep, so celebrated till the beginning of the eighteenth century, and so rigorously guarded and protected by Spanish Governments, there remains to-day hardly a trace. France, Sweden, and Saxony found means about that period to obtain specimens of the Spanish breed, and with them departed the glory of the privileged race. There remain now in Spain but degenerate representatives. Years of apathy have left to her little but the coarsest breed of sheep both as to flesh and fleece. The race from which nearly all the best European varieties have originated is now, perhaps, the lowest on the list.

Mutton is comparatively scarce in the southern mercados, where for one sheep may be seen a dozen kids exposed for sale. The latter—strange parti-coloured little beasts—together with the ubiquitous pig and tough, stringy beef, provide most of the meat consumed in Spain, whose scant quantity and poor quality is eked out by vast supplies of small birds—Larks, Buntings, Quails, and the like—which are caught by means of a dark-lantern at night, as we have elsewhere described; whole festoons of small birds, with Partridge, wildfowl, and Little Bustards, adorn the market-stalls in the Spanish cities, flanked by Roe and Red Deer from the forests, and sometimes by a grizzly boar from the sierra.

The Spanish markets also afford a wondrous display of southern fruits and vegetables—whole mountains of golden melons and sandias, tons of tomatoes and pimientos (red pepper), prickly pears, purple-ripe figs, loquats, apricots, grapes, and other fruit according to season; with lettuces, wild asparagus and a host of other vegetables. From every house in the town comes a servant to purchase the day's requirements of fish, flesh, fowl, or fruit—for everything is bought and consumed from day to day. There is no "cold mutton" in a Spanish menu! By eight o'clock, but little remains unsold, so an early start is needed to see the best of the show.

Supplement.

Since writing the above, we have come across an interesting article on this subject in one of the best Spanish papers (the Epoca), from which we translate the following extracts, giving the native version of the present agricultural status:—"We must confess that the condition of Spanish agriculture is sufficiently deplorable, not only by reason of the apathy of its agriculturists, but also through the difficulties which the land presents to its perfect cultivation, to the use of manures, and the employment of modern machinery. It must be borne in mind that the land of the abrupt mountains of the Asturias, Galicia, and Cataluña condemns the country-people to the roughest and most laborious preparation. This is shared, though to a less extent, by the labradores of the arid regions of Guipúzcoa, Biscay and Navarre; of the ricefields of Valencia, and on the sunburnt vegas of Andalucia and Estremadura. Besides these physical difficulties there are other disadvantages of hardly less importance. A vast extent of terrain now lies waste and uncultivated through lack of capital and sparseness of population; through the heavy tribute exacted by the state on agricultural produce, and the absence of means of communication to economize the transport of the harvest.

I.—The Pinales, or Pine Region.

There are features of Spanish bird-life that give the subject a claim on the interest of British readers. Spain is the home of many of those species which we call "rare;" some of the rarest are here quite common. Especially is this the case with the large birds of prey, with many aquatic species—such as the beautiful Southern Herons—and various other bird-groups.

Lying midway between Europe and Africa, Spain also affords opportunity for the observation of migration—nearly all our British summer-birds can be observed here in transit, during the spring months: some, indeed, have wintered in Spain, while the rest appear on passage from Africa to the North.

More than this, Spain possesses a magnificent avi-fauna of her own, entirely unknown in England. Ornithologically, her southern provinces—at least in spring—might be included in what Mr. Sclater designates the "Cis-atlantean Subregion" (Ibis, 1891, p. 523), for their feathered denizens at that season approximate rather to the North African than to the European ornis.

During several springs we have made ornithological expeditions each of a fortnight to three weeks' duration, in various parts of Andalucia (itself nearly as large as England), La Mancha, and Southern Estremadura. Between the great rivers Guadalquivir and Guadiana lies a wild region, almost abandoned to wild animals, and rich in picturesque desolation. The district is an undulating plain, its chief physical constituent being sand, or light sandy soil, clad over wide areas with pine-forest, elsewhere with open heaths which extend from the Atlantic to the confines of Estremadura and the border-land between Spain and Portugal, or rather of the ancient kingdom of the Algarves. The southern portion is known as the Cotos del Rey and Doñana, the latter, extending some forty miles inland from the sea, the property of the noble house bearing one of the oldest European titles—that of Medina Sidonia. The Coto de Doñana, as the name implies, is a preserve, and, owing to the circumstance of our having for many years been lessees of the sporting rights, this lovely wilderness has formed a favourite hunting-ground at all seasons. But we have also traversed some other of the wilder regions of the south—many quite as rich, zoologically—such, for example, as the wooded province of Córdova, the vegas of the Sierra Nevada and the environs of Almaden; and we now believe that, for the naturalist, the richest field of all is in Southern Estremadura and the almost unexplored borders of Guadiana. That river, from Daimiel downwards, flows through wildernesses of cane-brake, abounding both in large and small game, and in spring-time with infinite variety of birds.

For our present purpose we have divided the Spanish plains into three sections:—the pine-forests, the open heaths, and the meres or lagoons; of these we will now take the pinales.

Starting on a bright April morning to traverse the pinales of La Marismilla, our first find was a nest of the Serpent-Eagle (Circäetus gallicus) built in the main fork of a stone-pine, a curiously twisted tree growing apart on a heathery knoll in a forest-glade. This, and all the nests of this eagle we have seen, was small, very thick in proportion to width, had a layer of dead leaves, and then a lining of twigs. This bird only lays one egg—large, rough, and white—which fact perhaps explains the relative smallness of their nests. Below are strewn many vertebræ of serpents; a female we shot had a snake four feet long in her beak, only a few inches hanging outside; another, killed at her nest in a mountain-forest of the sierra, had a rabbit; but snakes and large reptiles are their chief prey. Snakes abound in Spain, and some grow to great size, many reaching six feet in length, and we have killed lizards of nearly three.

The legs and feet of this eagle are pale bluish, and very rough—to hold their slippery prey. The eye is large, overhung, and very bright yellow; flight buoyant, but rather unsteady, and they show very white from below. Most reptiles hybernating, even in sunny Spain, the Serpent-Eagle is only a summer migrant—we have never observed it in the winter months. The date of arrival this year (1891) was March 8th. In 1888 we observed a pair as early as the 3rd.

A singular, but well-known, habit of the Kite (the Red, not the Black species) is to decorate their abodes with a collection of gaudy rags and other fantastic rubbish: in one case I found the dead and dried remains of a White Owl hung up, in others the long quill-feathers of the Spoon-bill and other birds, a linen shirt-sleeve, old match-boxes, and similar sundries. But this curious custom was useful in saving many an unnecessary climb—no nest was worth going up to unless a rag or two fluttered in the breeze. The Kites, moreover, select the loftiest trees for their abodes, and owing to the habit of Spanish foresters to lop off all the lower branches of the pines when saplings, these trees grow up tall, straight, and slippery as fishing-rods. Fortunately for oological enterprise, the scant population of the pinales are mostly piñaleros—pine-cone gatherers. These pine-cones are used for fuel and for making a confection something like nougat. The tree-climbing abilities of the piñaleros are marvellous: in this way we obtained many eggs of Kite, Buzzard, Booted Eagle, and most of the forest-breeding species.

After a stiff climb to one Kite's nest, built in a tall branchless aspen, whose base was barricaded by clinging thorny briars, I was disappointed to find no eggs. The Kite had sat close, and I had just shot her from the nest: all around hung the customary decorations, yet the big nest appeared to contain nothing but a white rag. I turned this over, and there, beneath and almost wrapt in what proved to be a delicate cambric handkerchief, embroidered with the name "Antonia M.," lay two handsome eggs! The fair Andaluza who had lost this property might throw an interesting light on the distances traversed by Kites in the search thereof: Shakespeare warned her (Winter's Tale, Act IV., Sc. 2), "Where the Kite builds, look to lesser linen."