The mongoose is perhaps the least easily secured, being absolutely nocturnal and running so low (like a giant weasel) as to be almost invisible, however slight the covert. It is, moreover, an adept at concealment, and will scarcely be detected even at thirty yards if stationary. The best way to secure specimens of badger and mongoose is by digging-out their breeding-earths or warrens. An initial difficulty is to find the earths amid leagues of scrub or rugged mountain-sides; and even when located it may be necessary to burn off half an acre of brushwood before the spade can be brought into action. From one set of earths we have succeeded in digging out five big mongoose alive. That night, though confined in strong wooden cases, they gnawed their way out, and were never seen more, albeit their prison was on board a yacht anchored in mid-stream and half-a-mile from shore. * * * * * A few such days and nights as these teach that wild Spain cherishes other animals besides the game, to the full as interesting and even more difficult to secure. If we are asked (as we often have been before) why we molest creatures which have no value when killed, we reply that almost without exception our Spanish specimens have gone to enrich one collection or another, public or private, and that during the year in which we write this the authors spent a fortnight in obtaining a series of these animals for our National Museum at South Kensington, with the following results:--[56] Four lynxes--two males, 30-1/4 and 31 lbs.; two females, 18-1/2 and 23 lbs.--representing both types, namely, (1) that with many small spots, and (2) the handsomer form with fewer large and conspicuous blotches. One wild-cat (an exceptional specimen)--a male of 15 lbs., with yellow irides instead of the usual cold, cruel, pale-green eyes like an unripe gooseberry. This cat was what the Spanish keepers describe as _rayado_ = banded, _i.e._ the spots are arrayed in regular series or interrupted bands rather than scattered promiscuously. This race is distinguished as _gato clavo_, the ordinary wild-cat being known as _gato romano_. Several other wild-cats (_Gatos romanos_)--males weighing from 10-3/4 to 12-1/2 lbs.; females weighing from 7-1/2 to 8-1/4 lbs. In the sierras wild-cats run heavier than this, for we have killed in Moréna a wild-cat that scaled 7-3/4 kilos, or upwards of 17 lbs. Two badgers--male, 17-1/2 lbs.; female, 14-1/2 lbs. These Spanish badgers are blacker in the legs than British examples, and their fore-claws are more powerfully developed, possibly in this case through living in sand. Really big males weigh nearly double the above. Ten foxes (_Vulpes melanogaster_)--six males weighing 13-3/4, 14, 15 16-1/2, 16-1/2, 17 lbs.; four females weighing 11, 11-3/4, 13-1/2, 14 lbs.