CHAPTER XXXVI 
SERRANIA DE RONDA (Continued) 
JJ. THE SIERRA BERMEJA 
Tue Sierra Bermeja, standing on Mediterranean shore, demands 
a page or two if only because it affords a home to three of Spain’s 
peculiar and rarer guests—the pinsdpo, the tbex, and the lammer- 
geyer. 
Our earlier experience in Bermeja, our efforts to study its 
ibex—and to secure a specimen or two—are told in Wild Spain. 
Suffice it here to say that the characteristic of these Mediter- 
ranean mountains is that here the ibex habitually live, and even 
lie-up (as hares do), among the scrubby brushwood of the hills 
—a remarkable deviation from their observed habits elsewhere, 
whether in Spain, the Caucasus and Himalayas, or wherever ibex 
are found. But since brushwood clothes Bermeja and other 
Mediterranean hills to their topmost heights, the local wild-goats 
have literally no choice in the matter. Still, such a habitat must 
strike a hunter’s eye as abnormal, and is, in fact, a curious instance 
of “adaptation to environment.” 
During December 1907 we spent some days in Bermeja in an 
attempt to stalk the ibex—a difficult undertaking when game is 
always three-parts hidden by scrub. On former occasions we had 
secured a specimen of two by stalking (here called raspagéo) and 
“driving” ; but whatever chance there might’ have been was this 
time annihilated by incessant mists enshrouding the heights in 
opaque screen. Thus another carefully organised expedition and 
unstinted labour were once more thrown away ! 
On December 19 we drove the “ Pinsapal.” This, commencing 
The Spanish name of the ibex, Cabra montés, signifies, not as might appear, ‘ mountain- 
goat,” but serub-goat ; and may have originated in this region, or at least from a habit which 
prevails here though obsolete everywhere else. 
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