Similarly, when the engineer shall have been turned loose in the Spanish marismas, he can, beyond all doubt, destroy them for ever. His straight lines and intersecting canals, hideous in utilitarian rectitude, would right soon demolish that glory of lonely desolation--those leagues of marshland, samphire, and glittering _lucio_. And all for nothing! Since the desecration will not "pay" financially--the reason we give in detail elsewhere--and you sacrifice for a shadow some of the grandest bits of wild nature that yet survive--the finest length and breadth of utter abandonment that still enrich a humdrum Europe. Should "progress" only advance on these lines no scrap of that continent will be left to wanderer in the wilds--no spot where clanging skeins of wild-geese serry the skies, and the swish of ten thousand wigeon be heard overhead; or that marvellous iridescence--as of triple flame--the passing of a flight of flamingoes, be enjoyed.[6] That national progress and development may come, for Spain's sake, we earnestly pray. But does there exist inherent reason why progress, in itself, should always come to ruin natural and racial beauties? Progress seems nowadays to be misunderstood as a synonym for uniformity--and uniformity to a single type. Disciples of the cult of insensate haste, of self-assertion and advertisement, have pretty well conquered the civilised world; but in Spain they find no foothold, and we glory to think they never will. Spain will never be "dragooned" into a servile uniformity. There remain many, among whom we count our humble selves, who bow no knee to the modern Baal, and who (while conceding to the "hustling" crowd not one iota of their pretensions to fuller efficiency in any shape or form) are proud to find fascination in simplicity, a solace in honest purpose and in old-world styles of life--right down (if you will) to its inertia. Yes, may progress come, yet leave unchanged the innate courtesy, the dignity and independence of rural Spain--unspoilt her sierras and glorious heaths aromatic of myrtle and mimosa, alternating with natural woods of ilex and cork-oak--self-sown and park-like, carpeted between in spring-time with wondrous wealth of wild flowers. There is nothing incongruous in such aspiration. Incongruity rather comes in with misappreciation of the fitness of things, as when a coal-mine is planked down in the midst of sylvan beauties, to save some hypothetic penny-a-ton (as per Prospectus); where pellucid streams are polluted with chemical filth and vegetation blasted by noisome fumes; or where God's fairest landscapes are ruined by forests of hideous smoke-stacks. If vandalisms such as these be progress then we prefer Spain as she is. A NOTE ON THE SPANISH FAUNA After all, it is less with the human element that this book is concerned than with the wild Fauna of Spain; a brief introductory notice thereof cannot, therefore, be omitted. [Illustration: BONELLI'S EAGLE (_Aquila bonellii_)