Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/324

 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.

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.

Through thee I rest secure beneath the shade, Such plenty hath thy generous bounty made,