Andalucia and its Big Game 59 
breaks back in the very face of encircling 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 different 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 “firmg 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 woodcock ! 
Driving Bia 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 Dofana, 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 
flank 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’sride. These long scrambling 
drives gain enhanced interest to a naturalist in precisely inverse 
ratio with their probability of success. 
In a big-game drive the first animals to come forward are, 
