A special decree of 100 clauses was issued in Madrid on the 21st of March, 1861, for the regulation of cock-fights.  The 1st clause declares that since cock-fights are a source of revenue to the State, they shall only take place in arenas licensed by the Government.  The 6th restricts them to Sundays and holidays; the 7th, from the conclusion of high mass to sunset.  The 12th forbids more than $50 to be staked on one contest.  The 38th decrees that each cock shall carry but one weapon, and that on its left spur.  By the 52nd the fight is to be considered over when one or both cocks are dead, or when one shows the white feather.  In the London Daily News of the 30th June, 1869, I find it reported that five men were sentenced at Leeds to two months’ hard labor for setting six cocks to fight one another with iron spurs.  From this it appears that this once favorite spectacle is no longer permitted in England.

[49] The raw materials of these adventures were supplied by a French planter, M. de la Gironiere, but their literary parent is avowedly Alexander Dumas.

[50] Botanical gardens do not seem to prosper under Spanish auspices.  Chamisso complains that, in his day, there were no traces left of the botanical gardens founded at Cavite by the learned Cuellar.  The gardens at Madrid, even, are in a sorry plight; its hothouses are almost empty.  The grounds which were laid out at great expense by a wealthy and patriotic Spaniard at Orotava (Teneriffe), a spot whose climate has been of the greatest service to invalids, are rapidly going to decay.  Every year a considerable sum is appropriated to it in the national budget, but scarcely a fraction of it ever reaches Orotava.  When I was there in 1867, the gardener had received no salary for twenty-two months, all the workmen were dismissed, and even the indispensable water supply had been cut off.

[51] For a proof of this vide the Berlin Ethnographical Museum, Nos. 294-295.

[52] Bertillon (Acclimatement et Acclimatation, Dict.  Encycl. des Science, Medicales) ascribes the capacity of the Spaniards for acclimatization in tropical countries to the large admixture of Syrian and African blood which flows in their veins.  The ancient Iberians appear to have reached Spain from Chaldea across Africa; the Phoenicians and Carthaginians had flourishing colonies in the peninsula, and, in later times, the Moors possessed a large portion of the country for a century, and ruled with great splendor, a state of things leading to a mixture of race.  Thus Spanish blood has three distinct times been abundantly crossed with that of Africa.  The warm climate of the peninsula must also largely contribute to render its inhabitants fit for life in the tropics.  The pure Indo-European race has never succeeded in establishing itself on the southern shores of the Mediterranean, much less in the arid soil of the tropics.