descriptions we had read of Iberian habits, the falcons were directed over the point of attraction. Clearing in circling descent the spires and towers of the cathedral church, our ears were saluted with the mingled bellowings of a seemingly enraged animal, and loud shouts arising from a multitudinous collection of voices pitched in range from the shrill stridency of childhood, through the medium grades of maturity, to the vacuous piping tones of senility. Over-reaching the gate towers, we beheld collected in an amphitheatre within wooden barriers, a large concourse of people, intently gazing with boisterous plaudits upon an encounter between a horned animal of the quadruped species and armed men with garments covered with tinsel. The sides of the enraged beast were dabbled and trickling with gore, from the many wounds inflicted by the knives and spears of the “sportsmen.” In quick apprehension of the effect of this cruel pastime, which had caused our wives to give utterance to a cry of pitying horror, the volantaphs suddenly depressed the falcon’s tail from the “bishop’s run to the pope’s nose” causing it to fan-spread, intercepting the view of objects beneath from the howdah; then soaring to a poise, soon left the revolting scene and arbiters of cruel instinct beyond the compass of eyes and ears. One of our Corcovadian correlatives then explained the nature and origin of the amusement. He said that it was styled by the Spanish a taurista, and when it commenced at sunrise it was styled “taurista hiquete para almuerzo.” The practice was said to have been derived originally from a race inhabiting an island in the northern ocean, who utilized the flesh of the slain brutes, and as a sequence assimilated their pugnacious characteristics.