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That afternoon matadors killed the six fine bulls of Don Ernesto Blanco for the glory of Spain's national sport. The next three days the encierro was repeated with different batches of bulls. At the end of four days thousands of people had seen Spain's leading matadors perform. They included: Marcial Lalanda, long considered the best; Nicanor Villalta and Vincente Barrera, also oldtimers; Domingo Ortega, who in his second season is the most talked of matador in Spain; Jaime Noaín, another fast-rising youth; Luis Fuentes Bejarano, who is sometimes brave, sometimes funny.
The Bull is Spain's chief animal. He is a descendant of the wild bulls that roamed the Iberian peninsula, a closer cousin of the African Cape buffalo than of any domestic cattle. Spanish ganaderías (bull-raising establishments) raise their bulls in a wild state. Carefully bred to bring out all the courage of the strain, the best specimens are rigorously tested, the tame ones weeded out to be butchered. Those raised to fight are never allowed to come in contact with a man on foot lest they learn his tricks. They must remain virgin. The young ones and defectives are fought by novilleros (novices); full-grown bulls (over three years) are killed by full-fledged matadors. Most of the ganaderías are near Salamanca, in the west of Spain, and in Andalusia, south of Seville. Largest, fiercest, most cunning are the bulls of the sons of Don Eduardo Miura, whose ganadería is near Seville. Miura bulls kill many horses.* Few matadors like to fight Miuras; some will not. Many breeders have bred smaller bulls at the behest of cautious matadors, but if a bull is too small he is whistled out of the ring. For those who wish to judge bulls before they reach the ring two occasions are important: the feria (fair) at Seville in the spring and the July encierros at Pamplona.
Sweet Butterflies
For 24 years Austin Hobart Clark has been smelling butterflies in & about the District of Columbia. Just how much pleasure he has got from it he told last week in a 337-page volume laconically entitled The Butterflies of the District of Columbia & Vicinity. In it Butterfly Lover Clark, who is curator of echinoderms at the U. S. National Museum and only smells butterflies as a pastime, poetically reveals several hitherto unsuspected facts concerning the butterfly. Items:
Many male butterflies have the fragrance of flowers. The common orange-&-black regal fritillary, a shy little fellow, emits a strong, sweet, spicy odor resembling that of sandalwood. He feeds on the tops of red milkweeds and thistles, will flee if approached by man. The smell of the female is exceedingly nauseating. The blue butterfly smells like "newly stirred earth in spring or crushed violet stems." The lesser sulphur exudes the fragrance of dried sweet grass. The orange clover's scent resembles heliotrope. If a cloud obscures the sun it at once seeks a resting place, preferably on something yellow. It is very social. The cloudless clover smells of violets and musk, the cabbage butterfly of mignonette and sweet briar, the yellow swallowtail of "certain brands of honey biscuits." The milkweed butterfly has an odor like "the faint sweet fragrance of red clover blossoms." The female smells like a cockroach.