Oxen intended for the refrigerators are bought either on the ranches or at Buenos Aires, where beasts in good condition are consigned to buyers, but oxen for fattening are bought at fairs which are held periodically in the towns of the interior. Another transaction at these fairs is the trade in pedigree breeders. The best known of them is held at Villa Mercedes (province of San Luis), where 8,000 oxen are sold every month. At the Mercedes fairs one may see Durham steers from the east of Buenos Aires which are to be fattened and sent back to the refrigerators or the slaughter-houses of Buenos Aires. There are also creole cattle from the north of the San Luis province and Rioja which will later be eaten in Mendoza or in Chile. There is, in fact, on the western frontier of the Pampa no line of demarcation corresponding to that set up in the north by the limit of the area contaminated by the _garrapate_, separating the district of creole breeding from that of selective breeding. There is free communication here between the two zones, and the lucerne fields for fattening at Villa Mercedes are used in common by the breeders of the Pampa and of the bush.[104] [104] A large number of the cattle which are to be fattened are bought at the market in Buenos Aires; but these do not, as a rule, come from the Pampean region. _Cultivated Areas in the Argentine Republic_ (_in square kilometres, almost exclusively in the Pampean region_). -----+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------- | Wheat. | Maize. | Oats. | Flax. | Lucerne. -----+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------- 1896 | 25,000 | 14,000 | -- | 5,600 | 8,000 1900 | 33,000 | 12,000 | -- | 6,000 | 15,000 1902 | 36,000 | 18,000 | -- | 15,000 | 17,000 1905 | 56,000 | 22,000 | 700 | 10,000 | 29,000 1910 | 62,000 | 32,000 | 8,000 | 15,000 | 54,000 1912 | 69,000 | 38,000 | 12,000 | 17,000 | 59,000 1913 | 65,000 | 41,000 | 11,600 | 17,000 | 66,000 1914 | 62,000 | 42,000 | 11,400 | 17,000 | -- -----+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------- _Exports for 1913, 1914, and 1915 at each port._