28 Unexplored Spain 
superficies, either a desert wilderness or a mountain solitude, 
naturally lends congenial conditions of life to the predatory forms 
that rely on hooked bill, on tooth and claw, fang and talon, to 
ravage their more gentle neighbours. Savage raptores, furred 
and feathered, characterise her wilder scenes. Wherever one 
may travel, a day’s ride will surely reveal huge vultures and 
eagles circling aloft, intent on blood. Throughout the wooded 
plains the majestic Imperial Eagle is overlord—you know him 
afar in sable uniform, offset by snow-white epaulets. Among the 
sierras a like condominium is shared by the Golden and Bonelli’s 
Types or SpanisH Birp-Lire 
WHITE-FACED DUCK (#rismatura leucocephulu) 
Bill much dilated, waxy-blue in colour. Wings extremely short ; a sheeny grebe-like plumage, 
and long stiff tail, often carried erect. 
Eagles—and they have half-a-dozen rivals, to say nothing of 
lynxes and fierce wolves (we give a photo of one, the gape of 
whose jaws exceeds by one-half that of an African hyaena). 
Then there patrol the wastes a horde of savage night-rovers, 
denominated in Spanish Alimafias, to which a special chapter 
is devoted. 
In Estremadura, where man is a negligible quantity, and 
along the wild wooded valley of the Tagus, roams the Fallow- 
deer in aboriginal purity of blood—whether any other European 
country can so claim it, the authors have been unable to ascertain. 
In Cantabria and the Pyrenees the Chamois abounds. 
Of the big game (the list includes red, roe, and fallow-deer, 
