Note 1379 — HORSE-SHOES.

A few observations respecting spartum maybe of service to those who wish to carry their researches further. The ancients, and particularly the Greeks, understood by that appellation several species of plants which could be used and manufactured like flax or hemp, and which appear to have been often mentioned under that general name. The Greeks however understood commonly by spartum a shrub, the slender branches of which were woven into baskets of various kinds, and which produced young shoots that could be prepared and manufactured in the same manner as hemp; and this plant, as has already been remarked by the old botanists, is the Spartium junceum, or Spanish broom, which grows wild on dry land, that produces nothing else, in the Levant and in the southern parts of Europe. This broom is that described and recommended in Comment. Instituti Bonnoniensis, vi. p. 118, and vi. p. 349. The French translator of the papers here alluded to is much mistaken when he thinks, in Journal Economique, 1785, Novembre, that the author speaks of the common broom (Spartium scoparium) that grows on our heaths. M. Broussonet, in Mémoires d’Agriculture, par la Société de Paris, 1785, p. 127, has also recommended the cultivation of the Spart. junceum, under the name of genêt d’Espagne, and enumerated the many uses to which it may be applied. The people in Lower Languedoc, especially in the neighbourhood of Lodeve, make of it table-cloths, shirts and other articles of dress. The offal or rind serves as firing. This spartum of the Greeks, or Spartium junceum of the botanists, is the species called by Pliny, book xxxix. chap. 9, genista, and which he improperly considers as the Spanish and African spartum. The latter is certainly the Stipa (Macrochloa) tenacissima, which grows in Spain and Africa, called there at present sparto or esparto, and which is still prepared and employed as described by Pliny, b. xix. c. 2. Baskets, mattresses, ship-cables, and other strong ropes were made of it; and when this grass had been prepared like hemp, it was used for various fine works. Even at present the Spaniards make of it a kind of shoes called alpergates, with which they carry on a great trade to the Indies, where they are very useful on the hot, rocky and sandy soil. [Moritz Willkomm, in his Botanical Notices from Spain (Annals of Natural History for March 1845), notices among the most valuable vegetable productions of Spain, “the celebrated Esparto (Macrochloa tenacissima), which, growing on many of the hills situated near the sea, forms an important article of trade in South Spain, since this tough grass is used partly for the plaiting of coverings for rooms and balconies, and for making various sorts of baskets, especially panniers for mules, chairs, and the peculiar sandals which are worn all over the kingdom; and partly worked into ropes, which are in great request, and are manufactured in great quantity at Marseilles.”] Whether the ancients made shoes for their cattle of the Spartium junceum or the Stipa tenacissima, I will not venture to determine. It is probable that the former was used by the Greeks, and the latter by the Romans; and it is highly worthy of being here remarked, that in modern times a kind of socks for horses were made of a species of spartum, as we learn from J. Leonis Africæ Descriptio, lib. iii. p. 120. The same author however says expressly, p. 96, that common shoes of iron were also used.