May the 1st broke bright and clear, not a cloud in the azure firmament. The songs of hoopoes, serins, and a cuckoo resounded hard by, and from our paneless window we watched three glorious rock-thrushes "displaying" before their sober mates--as sketched at p. 18. Within sight among the tumbled boulders were also a pair of blue thrushes, with a woodlark or two, several black-starts, and rock-buntings. [Illustration: WOODLARK (_Alauda arborea_) Nests in Neváda up to 5000 feet, and in the pine-forests of Doñana at sea-level.] We bathed in an ice-cold burn with temperature little above freezing--at dawn, indeed, the backwaters were ice-bound. Then, mounted on a donkey, the writer alternately scrambled up the stony steeps or dragged the sure-footed beastie behind. The gentler slopes were fairly clad with yellow daffodil or narcissus, now just coming into bloom, and above 7000 feet we entered a zone of dwarf-arbutus and ilex-scrub. The warm sunshine brought out numerous butterflies--it seemed strange to see these frail creatures fluttering across open snows! Most of those recognised were tortoise-shells, rather paler than our own. Alas, before noon the icy mists once more swept up. In a crevice among some rocks where we sought shelter at 8000 feet the skeleton of a wheatear attested the cruel conditions of bird-life--death by starvation. Here we separated, the writer going for a snow-scramble, following the dwindling Monachil to its source, where the nascent river trickles in triple streamlets down black rock-walls mantled by impending snow-fields. Here snow lay in scattered patches dotted with the resurgent unkillable "pincushion" gorse (_Buphaurum spinosum_) and a spiny broom that later develops a purple blossom, and separated by intervals where the melting mantle had left Mother Earth viscous and inchoate, heart-broken at the indignity of eight months in the arctic. Higher up the snow became continuous, but seamed by innumerable rills, each laughing and dancing as in delight at a new-found existence, or converging to join streams in buoyant exuberance. Some leapt forward through fringing margins of emerald moss; others ploughed sullen ways beneath an overhung snow-brae. But no chirp or sound of bird-life broke the silence, the only living creatures were ants and a bronze-green beetle! (_Pterostichus rutilans_, Dej.)--not a sign of those alpine forms we had specially come to seek. [Illustration] From 8500 feet the snow stretched upwards unbroken (save where some sheer escarpment protruded), covering in purest white the vast shoulder of the Veleta. The Picácho itself was to-day hidden amidst swirling clouds, and only once did we enjoy a momentary glimpse of its great scarped outline. Yet in three short weeks, say by May 20, all these leagues of solid snow will have vanished.