MR. C. A. IIAMOND ON A SHORT TRIP TO SPAIN. 
701 
XIV. 
A SHORT TR1 P TO SPAIN, WITH NOTES ON 
BIRDS OBSERVED. 
By Mr. Charles A. IIamond. 
Read 23rd February , 190 If. 
I must beg the indulgence of my hearers this evening for these 
very scanty Natural History notes. July is not a very good time 
for observing birds, many species are in the moult and the young 
birds not in full feather. It is also very difficult to identify many 
of the smaller birds, unless one can handle them, especially if it is 
one’s first sight of them out of a museum. 
1 was fortunate in my companions who are both keen sighted, 
and my son had been in the Mediterranean for a year and was 
acquainted with many species that were new to me. 
I have only mentioned those birds that I made sure of. Mr. 
Musters, of Annesley Park, Nottinghamshire, who has a magnificent 
collection of birds on the British list, many of them procured in 
Spain, helped mo with some that I was doubtful about. My 
chapter on the wild animals of Spain will compare with Ilolbrow’s 
celebrated chapter on Snakes in Iceland. There are no wild 
animals in Spain, or at least I didn’t see any, though my son 
picked up the skull of a fox on the hills at Granada. 
My son, who was then a midshipman in H.M.S.“ London,” wrote 
that he could get a fortnight’s leave in July when the fleet was at 
Gibraltar, and that we had better come out and spend it with him ; 
so, like dutiful parents, my wife and I landed at Gibraltar on July 
14th and crossed at once to Algeciras, where there is a beautiful 
hotel built in the Spanish fashion, with a big patio in the centre, 
marble-floored, and Swallows’ or Martins’ nests on every coign of 
vantage. The manageress whose grandfather had been a farmer at 
