We have now only to speak of the great central plateau, the Continental climate of Spain, and its productions. This is peculiarly the corn-growing district of Spain, the land of wheat and maize, especially in the Castiles. Estremadura and Leon are rather pastoral districts. It is in these provinces that the laws of the _Mesta_, for the protection of the celebrated merino sheep, ruled supreme, and which, though modified at the close of the last century, and some of their worst abuses done away with, were finally repealed only in 1835. By these laws the sheep and cattle which fed in the winter in the plains of Estremadura, and in the summer on the mountains of Leon, were privileged to enter almost any property on their line of march, to feed or to pass the night there. A space of ninety yards wide was reserved on each side of the highways for their accommodation; no land, especially no corn-field, was allowed to be enclosed; and right of forcible entrance was given to all orchards and vineyards where pasturage might be found. Wherever the flocks had once fed, the land could not be sold or alienated to any other purpose. The shepherds who tended these flocks became almost as savage and ignorant as the beasts they looked after; their privileges produced in them a contempt and hatred of all kinds of fixed property, and they were ever trying to extend their oppressive right at the expense of the more settled and agricultural portion of the community. Under the influence of these laws Estremadura, which, in the time of the Romans and Moors had been one of the richest provinces of Spain, became under their Christian conquerors not only one of the poorest and most thinly peopled districts, but also a curse and source of destruction to the rest. Not only were all the evils of the old Roman "latifundia" reproduced in this mediaeval system, but the locust, which never breeds in cultivated lands, or where the plough passes, was enabled to make its home in the wilds and pastures of Estremadura, whence it periodically sallied out to devastate the fairest and richest portions of the land. In the years 1754 to 1757 it desolated the whole of the provinces between Estremadura and the Mediterranean. In 1686 and the following year it reached the principality of Barcelona, and, in spite of exorcisms, ravaged the country till there was nothing more to destroy. The provinces nearer to Estremadura are much more frequent sufferers, and in recent years (in 1876 the crops in Ciudad Real were utterly destroyed) a division of the army has been more than once employed to destroy or to check them on their march. The only plant they spare is the tomata, which they will not touch. Besides flocks, Estremadura maintains huge herds of swine, which feed on the sweet acorns and chestnuts of its woods, and whose flesh is renowned through Spain. Owing to its situation on the borders of Andalusia, in which province the Moors retained their powers long after they had lost the