But The Management Of The Madrid Bull-Ring Knows Its Public Too
Well To Promise More Than It Is Sure Of Performing.
It announces six
bulls, and positively no more.
It says there will be no use of
bloodhounds. It promises two picadors, with three others in reserve, and
warns the public that if all five become inutilized in the combat, no
more will be issued. With so fair a preliminary statement, what crowd,
however inflammable, could mob the management?
Some industrious and ascetic statistician has visited Spain and
interested himself in the bullring. Here are some of the results of his
researches. In 1864 the number of places in all the taurine
establishments of Spain was 509,283, of which 246,813 belonged to the
cities, and 262,470 to the country.
In the year 1864, there were 427 bull-fights, of which 294 took place in
the cities, and 13 3 in the country towns. The receipts of ninety-eight
bullrings in 1864 reached the enormous sum of two hundred and seventeen
and a half millions of reals (nearly $11,000,000). The 427 bull-fights
which took place in Spain during the year 1864 caused the death of 2989
of these fine animals, and about 7473 horses, - something more than half
the number of the cavalry of Spain. These wasted victims could have
ploughed three hundred thousand hectares of land, which would have
produced a million and a half hectolitres of grain, worth eighty
millions of reals; all this without counting the cost of the slaughtered
cattle, worth say seven or eight millions, at a moderate calculation.
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