off these, all the fapp that should go to the annual production, and to the nourishment of buds, ftems, leaves, flow ers, fruit, and growth of the branches, remains in the trunk, from hence ftagnation, fermentation and rottennefs. Next comes the time when the ewes begin to drop their lambs, which is the moft toilfome and moft follicitous part of the pastoral life. The shepherds first cull out the barren from the pregnant ewes, which are conducted to the beft fhelter, and the others to the bleakeft part of the district. As the lambs fall they are led apart with their dams to another comfortable fpot. A third division is made of the last yeaned lambs, for whom was allotted from the beginning the most fertile part, the best foil, and sweetest grafs of the down, that they may grow as vigorous as the firft yeaned, for they must all march the fameday towards their fummer quarters. The shepherds perform four operations upon all the lambs about the same time in the month of March, but first they pay the twentieth lamb; the other half tythe is paid in the winter walk. They cut off their tails five inches below the rump for cleanliness. They mark them on the nose with a hot-iron. They faw off part of their horns that the rams may neither hurt one another nor the ewes. They render impotent the lambs doomed for docil bell-weathers, to walk at the head of the tribe; they make no incifion; the shepherd turns the testicles with his finger twenty times about in the fcrotum, till he twifts the spermatic veffels as a rope, and they wither away without any danger. As foon as the month of April comes about, which is the time of their departure, the fheep exprefs, by various uneafy motions, a remarkable restleffnefs, and strong defire to go off. The shepherds must exert all their vigilance left they fhould escape, and it has often happened, that a tribe has stolen a forced march of three or four leagues upon a fleepy fhepherd; but he is fure to find them, for they return exactly the fame way they came, and there are many examples of three

or four strayed sheep walking an hundred leagues to the very place they fed in the year before. Thus they all go off towards their fummer mountains in the fame order they came, only with this difference, the flocks that go to Leo and Castile are shorn in the road, where we will stay a little to fee the apparatus of this operation, whilst the other flocks march on to Molina Aragon. They begin to shear the firft of May, provided the weather be fair, for if the wool were not quite dry, the fleeces which are close piled upon one another would ferment and rot; it is for this reafon that the fhearing houfes are fo fpacious. I faw fome which can contain in bad weather 20,000 sheep, and cost above 5000 l. fterling; besides, the ewes are creatures of fuch tender conftitutions, that if they were expofed im mediately after fhearing to the air of a bleak night, they would all perish.

There are 125 fhearmen employed to fhear a flock of 10,000 sheep; a man fhears 12 ewes a day and but 8 rams; the reason of this difference is, not on. ly because the rams have larger bodies, ftronger and more wool, but the fhearmen dare not tye their feet as they do thofe of the unrefiiting ewes. Experience taught, that the bold rebellious ram would struggle even to fuffocation in captivity under the fhears; they gently lay him down, they stroke his belly, they beguile him out of his fleece; a certain number of sheep are led into the great shelter-houfe, which is a parallelogram of 4 or 500 feet long, and 100 wide, where they remain all day; as many as they judge can be dispatched by the shearmen next day, are driven from the fhelter-hall into a long, narrow, low gut, called the sweating place, where they remain all night, crowded as clofe together as the fhepherd can keep them; that they may fweat plentifully, which, as they fay, is to foften the wol for the fhears, and oil their edges. They are led by degrees in the morning into the fpacious fhearing-hall, which joins the fweating-room. The fhepherd carries them off as fast as they

are

are sheared to be marked with tar, and as this operation is neceffarily performed upon one at a time, it gives a fair opportunity to the fhepherds to culi out for the butchery all the sheep of the flock who have out lived their teeth. The fheared fheep go to the fields to feed a little if it be fine weather, and they return in the evening to pass the night in the yard before the houfe, within the fhelter of the walls, but if it be cold and cloudy they go into the houfe; they are thus brought by de grees to bear the open air, and their first days journies from the thearing. houfe to the mountains are short, where we will leave them to conclude their annual peregrination, and go fee how fare the flocks of Molina Aragon, which have by this time got thither; but while the mule is addling, a word of the fhorn wool.

The fheep and fhearers dispatched, the first thing done is to weigh the whole File of wool; the next is to divide each fleece into three forts of wool; the back and belly give the fuperfine, the neck and fides give the fine; the breaft, fhoulders, and thighs the coarfe wool. A different price is fixed upon these three claffes, though the general custom is to fell the whole pile together at a mean price. It is fold after it is washed, when it is to go out of the kingdom, or to any confiderable distance in it; for as it never lofes lefs than half its weight in washing, and often more when the fweating is violent, half the carriage is faved.

Here I fee that I have changed the order I propofed in fetting out, for I have followed the sheep from the mountains to the plains, and back again, but 'tis not worth mending.

Thirty one leagues S. E. of Madrid and five leagues S. of the fource of the river Tagus is the town of Molina Aragon, capital of a lordship of the crown, which is twelve leagues wide, as many long, and almost in the center of Spain. The highlands of this little territory are covered with pine trees; the low lands feed about 150,000 sheep: here I learnt

fome truths, which prove that the three following opinions fhould be ranked a mongst vulgar errors.

r. That theep eat and love aromatick plants, and that the flesh of those that feed on hills where sweet herbs abound has a fine taste.

2. That falt tprings are not found in the high primitive mountains but in the low hills and plains only.

3 That metallic vapours destroy vegetation, that no rocks nor mountains pregnant with rich veins of ore are covered with rich vegetable foil.

The town of Molina is almoft in the middle of the sheep walks. The folid part of the country is formed of red and grey fandtone, limestone, white and grey granite, and plafter ftone, white, grey, yellow, bluish, greenish, and blood red; in some places these are all beautifully mixed in one ftratum. Time and moisture uncompound these ftones; for they have mouldered and are daily mouldering into the foil of the country, which is always of the fame nature as that of the rock. The red fuller's earth, with which the manufacturers of Molina clean their cloth, is evidently the very grains of fand of the red rock degraded into earth. The rocks about the town contain either falt, or faltpetre; you fee the hewn stones of the houtes covered with faline efflorefcences, which are drawn out by the fun after rain. The whole territory of Molina is full of falt fprings, but there is a copious falt fpring rifing out of a land yet higher than the fource of the Tagus, and not far from it, which is one of the highest lands in all the inward, parts of Spain; for it divides the waters of the ocean and Mediterranean, The Tagus runs 150 leagues to Lisbon, and the two rivers Guadalvair and Su car, which rife near it, run to Valen-, tia. This fpring furnishes falt to the, jurifdiction and bishoprick of Albarrazin. There is another falt spring, in a high land too, which fupplies the 82 towns and villages of Molina-Aragon with falt. Now I will mention the falt fpring that iffues out of a fpot in the

Montana,

Montana, which is higher than the fource of the Ebro, and about a quarter of a mile from it.

There are many iron, copper, lead, and pure pyritous ores in thefe fheep walks, where grow the fame plants and the fame sweet grafs as in the other parts, I will give one example. About two hours walk N. W. of Molina there is a little hill called the Platilla; it is a bout half a league over from valley to valley its body is folid, rocky, of white granite, through which run in different directions, and without any or der, an infinite number of blue, green, and yellow veins of rich copper ores, which hold a little filver, mineralifed by a great quantity of arfenick and fulphur. The very furface of the rock is in many places stained bluish and green, and the veins of ore are not above a foot deep in the fiffures and in the folid rock, which contain lead ore fometimes up to the furface.

The following plants grow out of the foil which covers these arsenical fulphurous veins, and which is not above a foot deep. True oak, Ilex, whose leaves fall; White-thorn, Juniper; these are poor fhrubs, because they are browsed bythe goats. Cyftus, wild-rofe, UvaUrfi, Phlomis falviæ, fol. fl. luteo, Verbafcum of the highways, Stoechas, Sage, Thymum legitimum, Clus, Serpyllum, greater and leffer; Rosemary, Helianthemum, Pimpinella, Chamædris, Filipendula, Stachys, lychnoides, Incana, angustifolia, flo. aureo. var. The great Afphodel, Coronilla of the meadows, Gallium luteum, Yarrow, Campanula radice efculenta, a Jacobea which I faw grow in the fand of the fea fide, and is all quite white. A gladiolus, and a little glaucium, which grow in cornfields in Spain; Leucanthemum of the meadows, Orchis, Ornithogalum, Mulcari, Pol gala, and above twenty kinds more, which are found likewife in meadows, cornfields, highways, hedges, and feahores; yet the non-calcary earth of this mineral hill is covered with the fame sweet small grafs as the rest of the country, even the limeftone land. I VOL. III.

made the fame observations at the three greatest mines in Europe; St. Mary of the Mines in Alfatia; Clauftahl in the Hartz-Mountains of Hanover; and Freyberg in Saxony. The mines of St. Mary are at the head of a valley in the Voge-Mountains; its hills are some of them covered with oak and pines, others with apple, pear, plumb, and cherry-trees: others are fine green downs for sheep and cows, with a great variety of plants; others are fields of wheat, which the year 1759, (as I find in my notes) gave a product of eight for one. All these things grow in a foot or two deep of foil, which covers a rock full of the most arfenical, fulphureous, filver, copper, lead and cobalt ores in Europe, and most of their veins near the furface.

The mines of Claustahl are in a plain which is, in truth, the fummit of a mountain. The Dorothy and Caroline veins of filver, lead and copper ore ftretch away eight miles to the Wildman Mountain. The finest meadows and sweetest grafs are upon these veins and all their branches near the city; they feed yoo cows, and 200 hories. They are mowed in June; a fecond grafs fprings up, which is mowed in Augufl. A multitude of plants grow in these meadows over the mines, as valerian, gallium fl. albo. coronilla, chrysanthemum fegettum, leucanthemum, viola tricolor. biftort. bonus henricus, St. John's wort, agrimony, ladies mantle, tuffilago, &c.

The mines of Freyberg are in the low hills near the city; I saw them all covered with barley in the month of July; a stranger would not imagine that men were reaping corn over hundreds of miners heads, who were blowing up veins of ore, arsenick, and brimftone.

It is true I alfo faw mines in the barren naked mountains and hilis, but it is certain that their barrenness is not the effect of mineral vapours The air, moisture, heat, and cold, have more power over the furfaces of fome rocks than others, to moulder the ftone into earth; fuch is the high mountain Ra૦૧

milfberg,

:

melfberg, at whofe foot is the imperial city of Gollar, whose inhabitants live, and have lived these 900 years by the mine of this steep barren mountain. I crept up to its fummit, and found it was fplit and cracked into millions of fiffures, from a foot wide to a hair's breadth; that in other places the rock was fhivered into fmall rotten ftones, which, in -fome fpots were perfectly uncompounded and fallen into earth, from whence fprung a little grafs, mofs, and a few plants. In fhort, I faw that the time of its decay into vegetable mould was not yet come, and that the mountain Ramelfberg will be one day as green as Clauftahl, which thews, I think, that the world is not fo old as fome men fancy. I will make no apology to Mr. Peter Collinfon for this digreffion; I heard Fame declare him twenty three years ago an enemy to error; he must love truth though he finds it placed out of order.

As my duty obliged me to pass hundreds of days at the Platillo mine of Molina, I faw thousands of sheep feed around it. 1 obferved that when the thepherd made a pause, and let them feed at their will, they fought only for the fine grafs, and never touched any aromatic plant; that when the creeping ferpillum was interwoven with the grafs, the sheep industriously nofled it afide to bite a blade, which trouble made them foon feek out a pure graminous spot.' I obferved too when the thepherd perceived a threatning cloud, and gave a fig nal to the dogs to collect the tribe and then go behind it, walking a pace himfelf to lead the theep to fhelter, that as they had no time to ftoop they would take a fnap of Stechas, rofemary, or any other fhrub in their way, for fheep will eat any thing when they are hungry, or when they walk faft. I, faw them greedily devour Ilenbane, Hemlock, Glaucium, and other naufeous weeds, upon their iffue out of the fhearing houfe. If theep loved aromatic plants, it would be one of the greatest misfortunes that could befall the farmers of Spain. The ́number of bee-hives is incredible; I

am almost ashamed to give under my hand, that I knew a parish priest who had 5000 hives. The bees fuck all their honey, and gather all their wax from the aromatick flowers, which enamel and perfume two thirds of the fheep-walks. This priest cautiously feizes the queens in a fmall crape fly catch, he clips off their wings; their majefties stay at home; he affured me that he never lost a swarm from the day of this difcovery to the day he saw me, which I think was five years.

The shepherd's chief care is not to fuffer the sheep to go out of their toils 'till the morning fun has exhaled the dew of a white froft, and never let them approach a rivulet or pond after a fhower of hail, for if they fhould eat the dewy grafs, or drink hail water, the whole tribe would become melancholy, faft, pine away and die, as often happened. Hail water is fo pernicious to men in this climate, that the people of Molina will not drink the river water after a violent fhower of hail, experience taught the danger; but let it be never fo muddy, and rife never fo high after rain, they drink it without fear. Perhaps this may be the unheeded cause of many endemical-epidemicks of other cities. The theep of Andaloufia who never travel have coarse, long, hairy wool. I faw a flock in Extramadura whose wool trailed on the ground. The itinerant fheep have fhort, filky, white wool. I do believe, from a few experiments, and long obfervation, that if the finewooled sheep stayed at home in the winter, their wool would become coarse in a few generations. If the coarfe-wooled fheep travelled from climate to climate, and lived in the free air, their wool would become fine, fhort, and filky in a few generations.

The fineness of the wool is due to the animal's paffing its life in an open air of equal temperature. It is not colder in Andaloufia and Extramadura in the winter than it is in the Montana or Mo lina in fummer. There is little froft in Andaloufia, fometimes it fnows in June in Molina, I felt a cold day upon the

lealt