At about 13,000 feet at the end of May you find a yellow primula covering the ground more thickly than cowslips in this country; the air is laden with the scent of it, and growing with it is a pretty little heath-like flower (_Cassiope fastigiata_) with snow-white bells. Here and there is seen the large blue poppy (_Meconopsis_ sp.) and a white anemone with five or six flowers on one stem. Soon the trees get scantier and scantier, pines disappear altogether and then birches and willows and junipers, until only dwarf rhododendrons (_R. setosum_) are left, covering the hillsides like purple heather. In a few miles the country changes in character completely, and you come out on to the open plain of Phari. Here at 14,000 feet we saw the common cuckoo sitting on a telegraph wire and calling vigorously. This is Tibet proper, and henceforward you may travel for scores of miles and hardly see any plant more than a few inches high. In some places a little trumpet-shaped purple flower (_Incarvillea younghusbandii_) is fairly common, it lies prone on the sand with its leaves usually buried out of sight; and as we went Westward we found a dwarf blue iris (_I. tenuifolia_). Animals are few and far between: the Kiang, the wild ass of Tibet, is occasionally seen in small parties; they are very conspicuous on the open plains in full daylight, but almost invisible at dusk. The Tibetan gazelle is fairly numerous, and it is not uncommon to see one or two in company with a flock of native sheep and taking no notice of the shepherd, but when a stranger tries to approach they are off like a flash. Another animal of the plains is the Tibetan antelope (_Pantholops_), which is found in large numbers a little to the North of the region we visited, but the only signs of it we saw were the horns used as supporting prongs for the long muzzle-loading guns of the Tibetans. The Tibetan antelope was probably the Unicorn described by the French priest Huc in 1845. The only mammals that are commonly seen on the plains are the small mouse-hares or pikas (_Ochotona_), which live in colonies on the less stony parts of the plain, where their burrows often caused our ponies to stumble; they scurry off to their holes at your approach, but if you wait a few moments you will see heads peeping out at you from all sides. These engaging little creatures have been called "Whistling Hares," but of the three species which we found none was ever heard to utter a sound of any kind. The Tibetan name for them is Phuese. It is interesting to record that from one specimen I took three fleas of two species, both of them new to science. Birds are few on these stony wastes, larks, wheatears and snow-finches being the commonest. Elwes' shore-lark was found feeding young birds at the beginning of June, when the ground was not yet free from snow, and the song of the Tibetan skylark, remarkably like that of our own skylark, was heard over every patch of native cultivation.