Length (outside curve). Circumference. Tip to Tip. No. 1 9-1/2" 3-1/2" 3-5/8" No. 2 9-1/4" 4-3/8" 3" III. SIERRA DE JEREZ These mountains (being within sight of our home) formed the scene of our earliest sporting ventures in Spain. It is forty years ago now, yet do we not forget that first day and its anxieties, as we rode by crevices that serve for bridle-paths, along with a too jovial hill-farmer, Barréa by name, who persisted in carrying a loaded gun swinging haphazard and full-cock in the saddle-slings--that it was loaded we saw by the shiny copper cap on each nipple! Our objects that day were boar and roe-deer; but presently a partridge was descried sprinting up the rugged screes above. Out came the ready gun, and next moment all that remained of that partridge was a cloud of feathers and scattered anatomy. The ball had gone true. Barréa casually shouted to a lad to pick up the pieces, himself riding on as though such practice was an everyday affair. My own experience of ball-shooting being then limited, I reflected that if such were Spanish marksmanship, I might be left behind! On assembling for lunch, however, some vultures were wheeling high overhead, and it occurred to me to try my luck. By precisely a similar fluke, one huge griffon collapsed to the shot, and swirling round and round like a parachute, occupied (it seemed) five minutes in reaching the ground--1000 feet below us. That afternoon the antics of two strange beasties attracted my attention and again my ball went straight. The victim was a mongoose, and with some pride I had the specimen carefully stowed in the mule-panniers--never to see it more! The mongoose, we now know, owing to its habit of eating snakes, has acquired a personal aroma surpassing in pungency that of any other beast of the field, and our men, so soon as my back was turned, had discreetly thrown out the malodorous trophy. A boar-shooting trip to the Sierra de Jerez formed the first sporting venture in which the authors were jointly engaged; for which reason (though the memory dates back to March 1872) we may be forgiven for extracting a brief summary from _Wild Spain_:-- Our quarters were a little white rancho perched amid deep bush and oak-woods on the slope of the Sierra del Valle. A mile farther up the valley was closed by the dark transverse mass of the Sierra de las Cabras, the two ranges being separated by an abrupt chasm called the Boca de la Foz, which was to be the scene of this day's operations.