Andalucia and its Big Game 59 



breaks back iu the very face of eucircling foes. Within thirty 

 seconds he has regained security amid leagues of untrodden wilds. 

 Some years ago we tried the plan of placing one (or two) 

 guns with the driving -line ; but the experiment proved im- 

 practicable. Obviously only the coolest and most reliable men 

 could be trusted in an essay which otherwise involved danger. 

 Unfortunately — and it is but human nature — every one considers 

 himself equally cool and reliable. Hence the breakdown and 

 abandonment of the practice. For the long line of beaters, 

 struggling at diti'erent points through obstacles of varying 

 difficulty, necessarily loses precise formation ; it becomes more 

 or less broken and scattered. Here and there a man may get 

 "stuck" and left a hundred yards behind the general advance. 

 The risk in " firing back " is obvious. The writer remembers 

 being one of two guns with the beaters, when a pair of stags, 

 jumping up close ahead, bolted straight back, passing almost 

 within arm's length. As the second carried a fairly good head, I 

 dismounted and shot it, but was then horrified to discover that 

 my companion-gun had (contrary to all rules) gone back in 

 that very direction to shoot a woodcocl' ! 



Driving Big Game 



On " driving " as such we do not propose to enlarge. The 

 system is simple though the practice is subject to variation. 

 On the gently undulated levels of Donana, for example, the 

 latter (as already indicated) is widely differentiated from the 

 systems practised in mountainous countries— whether in Scotland 

 or the Spanish sierras — where shots can safely be accepted at 

 incoming or at passing game. Guns are there protected from 

 danger by intervening ridges, crags, and piled-up rocks that 

 Hank each "pass." Here the game must be left to pass well 

 through and outside the line of guns before a shot is permissible. 



Our " drives," whether in forest or scrub, seldom exceed a 

 couple of miles in extent ; but in wild regions where isolated 

 patches of covert are scattered, inset amid wastes of sand, the 

 area may be extended to half a day's ride. These long scrambling 

 drives gain enhanced interest to a naturalist in precisely inverse 

 ratio with their probability of success. 



In a bio;-Siime drive the first animals to come forward are, 



