These campo' fires are often very serious affairs. The dry thistles standing or leaning over, intersecting each other at different angles-the long dry grass and trefoil, laid and entangled, extending over leagues of plain heated by the sun-are ripe for conflagration. A careless fellow strikes a light for his cigar, and heedlessly throws down the match, or drops the live ash or the end of his cigar, and instantly the grass ignites, and, if there is a breeze, as instantaneously starts into a blaze, which, spreading right and left, soon acquires the breadth of hundreds or thousands of yards, as it sweeps onward, crackling and roaring. Terrified cattle, mares and sheep, fly before it, or are driven by affrighted shepherds and herdsmen, enveloped in curling waves of smoke: sometimes many are encircled and lapped in the flame. As it sweeps onward, here and there a taller blaze leaps up, and in a few minutes sinks; denser masses of smoke then roll up, and interfolding, chase each other to the clouds as some thatched 'puesto' is consumed.

Neighbours congregate, anxious and fearful; Trair yeguas!' (bring mares) is the cry; wild mares are 'balled' or lassoed' and stabbed; two mounted lasso men attaching themselves to the fore and two to the hind legs, drag the carcase along some distance ahead of the face of the on-marching fire; another and another follow on the same track, brushing away the dried vegetation, moistening the ground with the carcase juices, and leaving a cleared belt over which the flame does not pass ;-the fire is stopped; but over the leagues it has traversed lies a soft carpet of black and grey charcoal dust, out of which arise little wreathing jets of white smoke ascending from tufts of strong weeds or from cattle droppings, which continue to smoulder, and from which, from time to time, lap out feeble tongues of flame in answer to the wooing breeze.

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The burning of the virgin or semi-virgin plains of the outside campos is of course a very different affair from the accidental burning of inside ones crowded with cattle and sheep. On these rough campos there is an immense growth of strong, coarse herbage-hard grasses intermingling with the red paja-paja colorado-interspersed with large tracts of 'paja cortadera,' true Pampa grassand the hard thorn-pointed 'paja brava,' a rank growth, on much of which animals do not feed.

The perpetual clothing of the land with this rank vegetation necessarily prevents the action of the sun on the soil, and the consequent sourness, probably from the generation of silicic and other acids, gives rise to conditions productive of reedy or sedgy herbage. The burning of the campo at once admits the action of the sun on the soil, and at the same time deposits an alkaline ash, with carbon or charcoal, which, being washed into the soil by rain, gives rise to a tenderer herbage, and sweetens the 'pajas' themselves, so that animals will feed on their tender shoots, thereby checking their naturally rank growth, and permitting the growth of finer grasses, which is further encouraged by the droppings of the animals, whose trampling assists in keeping down the pajas until the conditions favourable to their growth are destroyed.

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I have just returned from a trip of inspection of outside camps, navigating' by compass through a sea of vegetation, now on a steppe,' trackless as the ocean, and presenting the appearance (it is the autumn season) of a boundless meadow of ripe grasses. Looking down on this from the saddle, we see the scarlet verbena, blue nemophila, the cream-coloured 'romerillo' (a poisonous plant), with many others, from out of which rise numberless large and small partridges, falcons and hawks soaring above, and deer start, face round for a moment, and then

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bound away. Anon we dip into the 'cañadones' (bottoms or lower levels), where the paja cortadero (Pampa grass), in full flower, stands in broad patches of hundreds or thousands of acres, or stretches in belts miles or leagues along the course of the cañadones,' gracefully bending its floss-like panicles, standing in close array, to the light breeze, and glittering in the sunlight like pearl-studded plumes, which brush the horseman's elbows as he goes upon his way. Beautiful as it is, it must disappear, that cattle and sheep may browse where it has stood.

In the autumn, there is enough of dry herbage to effect the burning of the camps, and yet sufficient green vegetation to detain the flames; so that the fire does not travel so quickly as to cause apprehension for any cattle or mares which may be on the steppe. As we canter over the plain, smoke rolls up on every side, and moves along broad pathed, many tinted and bright fringed by the sun. Now we ride parallel to the burning, or cross it in front, or wait until it passes at our feet, and then crossing over the burned surface of the broad meadow, follow the flames to the great beds of 'paja cortadero,' where they rise up taller, and mingle with a denser smoke, out of which the scorched panicles of the beautiful Pampa grass may be seen toppling over.

The best lands for sheep in the Argentine Republic are those of the province of Buenos Ayres, within a radius of fifty or sixty leagues of the city. They are likewise superior to those of the Banda Oriental: the grasses are less coarse, more tender and shorter. They have been more fed over, and to this may be attributed the finer character of the herbage. An improvident practice of over-stocking has, however, very much deteriorated some of these otherwise superior camps,' which will require some years, or a year or two, of comparative rest to re

suscitate them: many of the best grasses have almost disappeared, a natural consequence of overstocking, especially as most of the grasses being annual, and having had no opportunity of seeding, have become extinct, or only grow to a limited extent. The consequence of this is that their place has been almost entirely usurped by the clover (spotted medick), which, from its luxuriant trailing growth, and the great abundance of its seed, protected by prickly spiral pods, propagates itself readily, aided by the thistle and strong weeds. Hence when the annual clover dies down and dries in the sun, all is brown and parched, and strong winds sweeping over the higher grounds roll up the withered stems and carry them away, leaving the bare soil, into the dust of which the seed is shaken, and out of which it sprouts with the autumn rains. On such lands the sheep and cattle pick a scanty subsistence from the roots and seeds in summer. In a season of continued drought they no longer find this food, and die in great numbers.

The aspect of the country or camp in the summer and commencement of autumn presents a marked contrast to the other seasons. All is parched and brown; the thistle and trifolium have disappeared; in the lands where there are tall grasses, they too are brown and fallen: under the shelter of these, however, if there have been a few summer showers, young grasses spring up, and this tender herbage and the dry grasses intermingled constitute good food; and when there is water, the animals do well. In great droughts, on the other hand, all lakes and most of the brooks and streams are dried up, so that if there is no means on an establishment (as through improvidence is sometimes the case) to draw water from wells sunk for the purpose, immense loss is sustained cattle die by thousands, and others stray away to great

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distances in search of water; the majority of those which have not perished returning to the land on which they were bred, on the reappearance of a better state of things. Sheep farmers have occasion, in districts visited by drought in an unusual degree, to travel their sheep to other lands, taking them many leagues. This, however, is not often needed, and generally the necessity arises on those establishments where over-stocking has been practised.

The seed-pods of the trifolium (medick clover) are a great detriment to the wool of the sheep of Buenos Ayres when the shearing is delayed to the season of the ripening, and is known to the wool buyers as 'carretilla,' or small burr.

In the Banda Oriental, Entre-Rios, and Santa Fé, there are very good sheep lands, some few of which can be compared to those of Buenos Ayres: the coarser lands, however, will improve under judicious stocking. In the province of Buenos Ayres, without the radius spoken of, there are lands which have the same disadvantages as those of Entre-Rios, &c. The grasses are somewhat coarse and strong, and in many parts of all the abovementioned provinces they are so much so as to be quite unfit in their present state for sheep, and will be so until they have been well stocked with cattle and fired, as described in the foregoing pages. The seed-sheaths and stems of the grass, known as the 'flechilla,' or arrowgrass, which abound in certain districts, adhere to the wool and mat it, and also work their way through the skin of the sheep into the very flesh. This 'flechilla' is well known in Australia.

Around the large towns there is generally a radius dedicated to agricultural purposes; outside this, for a number of leagues, say forty or fifty, in the province of