Of all the countries in Europe, says Mr. Low, Spain has been the longest distinguished for the excellence of its wool. This fine country, more varied in its surface and natural productions than any other region of the like extent in Europe, produces a great variety of breeds of sheep, from the larger animals of the richer plains, to the smaller races of the higher mountains and arid country. Besides the difference produced in the sheep of Spain by varieties of climate and natural productions; the diversity of character in the animals may be supposed to have been increased by the different races introduced into it:--first, from Asia, by the early Phœnician colonies; secondly, from Africa by the Carthaginians, during their brief possession; thirdly, from Italy by the Romans, during their dominion of six hundred years; and fourthly, again from Africa, by the Moors, who maintained a footing in the country for nearly eight centuries. The large sheep of the plains have long wool, often colored brown or black. The sheep of the mountains, downs, and arid plains have short wool, of different degrees of fineness, and different colors. The most important of these latter breeds is the merino, now the most esteemed and widely diffused of all the fine-wooled breeds of Europe. Pliny not only refers in general terms to the various natural colors of the Spanish wool, but mentions more particularly the red wool produced in the district adjoining the river Bætis, or Guadalquiver[361]. [361] See Appendix A. Among the natural colors of the Bætic wool, Columella, a native of Cadiz, (vii. 2.) mentions, as has been already stated, _gray_ and _brown_. The latter is what we call _drab_, and the Spaniards _fusco_. It is now commonly worn by the shepherds and peasants of Spain, the wool being made into clothes without dyeing. Nonius Marcellus (_cap._ 16. _n._ 13), explaining the word _pullus_, which was called a _native_ color, because it was the natural color of the fleece, also shows, that this was a common quality of the Spanish wool. Another testimony is that of Tertullian. The sheep of Tarentum were imported into this part of Spain, and there also their fleeces were protected by clothing. Columella (L. vii. 2.) gives a very interesting account of the experiments made by his uncle, a great agriculturalist of Bætica, in crossing his Tarentine breed with some wild rams of an extraordinary color, which had been brought from Africa to Cadiz. (See latter part of next chapter.) We have a further evidence of the pains taken to improve the Spanish breed in the circumstance, that Italian shepherds passed into Spain, just as we have formerly seen, that they migrated into Italy from Arcadia. In the following lines of Calpurnius (Ecl. iv. 37-49.), Corydon, a young shepherd, tells his friend and patron, Melibœus, that he should have been transported into Bætica, had not the times improved, and his master’s favor enabled him to remain in Italy.