Sierra Morena 167 
we noticed water-shrews except on this occasion. While yet 
watching the water-fairies, another movement caught the corner 
of one eye; with slow sedate steps, a grey wild-cat was 
descending the opposite slope. She saw nothing, yet the 
foresight of the ‘303 carbine was recusant, it declined to get 
down into the nick, and a miss resulted. But what a bound the 
feline gave as an expanding bullet (at 2000 feet a second velocity) 
shattered the sierra half an inch above her back! 
An incident occurred near this point (though in another year) 
with a stag. Two shots had been fired on the left, when the 
slightest sound behind and above inspired a prepared glance in 
that direction—and only just in time, for three seconds later a 
glorious pair of antlers showed up 
on the nearest bush-clad height, 
and the easiest of shots yielded a 
35-inch trophy. 
The annexed drawing shows a 
14-pointer, which was killed here 
the following year by our host, Sr. 
Don Juan Calvo de Ledn of 
Mezquitillas. In mere inches the 
measurements may be surpassed 
by others, but no head that we have seen excels this in 
extraordinary boldness of curve and symmetry of form. This 
stag was shot on the Puntales del Peco, January 17, 1908, and 
in the same beat Sr. Juan Calvo, Junr., secured another fine 
14-pointer, as below :— 
Points, Length. Widest Tips. Widest Inside. | Circ. above Bez. 
No. 1 14 383" 39)" 334" 6” 
No, 2 14 364" ss 252" 
Less rosy on that occasion was the writer’s own luck. My 
post in Los Puntales was in a narrow neck or “pass” in the 
knife-edged ridge of a mountain-spur, the rock-strewn ground, 
overgrown with cistus shoulder-high, falling sharply away both 
before and behind. In front I looked into a chasm probably 
1500 feet in depth, the hither slope being invisible, so sharp was 
