The Coto Dofana SI 
We may conclude this chapter with an independent impression. 
Lying hidden in one of these lonely uestos—writes J. C. C.—ever 
induces in me a powerful and sedative sense of contemplation and 
reflection, though fully alert all the time. While thus waiting and 
watching, I can’t but marvel, first at nature’s wondrous plan of waste— 
a scheme here without apparent object or promise of fulfilment. Where 
I he the prospect comprises nothing but melancholy and unutterably 
silent solitudes of sand, droughty wastes with but at rare intervals some 
starveling patch of scant weird shrub destined either to shrivel in summer's 
sun or shiver in winter’s winds. But, lying in that environment, one 
marvels yet more at the extreme caution displayed by wild animals; one 
TOMILLO DE ARENA 
ALTABACA (Seryfuluric) Another sand-plant (in spring has a 
The starveling shrub that grows in sand. lovely pink bloom like sea-thrift). 
has exceptional opportunity of admiring the exquisitive vifts bestowed by 
nature upon her ferwe. Here is a young stag coming straight along, 
down-wind, ere yet the beat has begun, and in a desolate spot which to 
human sense could betray absolutely no feature or taint of danger. 
Suddenly he becomes rigid, arrested in mid-career—snitting at a pure 
untainted air, yet conscious somehow of something wrong somewhere ! 
It is a miraculous gift, though one cannot but feel grateful that we 
humans are devoid of senses that ever keep nerves in highest tension. 
Here is a sketch of a non-shootable stag thus suddenly statuetted thirty 
yards from me snugly hidden well down-wind, and so intensely interested 
that something else (a very old pal) well-nigh escaped notice. 
That something was our good friend Reynard—Zorro they style him 
out here—whose proverbial cunning exceeds all other cunnings. He has 
