BIRD-LIFE OF THE SPANISH SPRING-TIME. 245 



A characteristic of the forests of Donana are the 

 enormous sand-hills — mountains of blown sand dazzling 

 in the reflected sunlight, and devoid of green thing or trace 

 of life, beyond the track of prowling Lynx or Mongoose, or 

 the curious " broad-gauge " rcstigia of the tortoise. Stay : 

 there is a thin black strip of moving objects — they are all 

 ants, and that is one of their great highways — a beaten 

 track connecting two great industrial centres. Except on 

 the chosen line — a mere strip barely an inch wide, though 

 hundreds of yards in length — not another insect will be 

 visible on the wastes of sand. To the selected route each 

 member of their infinite community confines his course as 

 systematically as the steamships of our great ocean lines. 

 One cannot resist the temptation of interrupting this well- 

 regulated microcosm. Instantly confusion spreads in the 

 black ranks : around the point of obstruction the in- 

 tercepted battalions spread out like a fan : the tumult 

 and disorder extend backwards along either column till for 

 yards the sand is carpeted with the fragments of a dis- 

 organized host. But these scattered units are each seek- 

 ing to re-establish their lost continuity. The re-formed 

 column deflects a little to pass on one side or the other 

 (not both), and in a few minutes the "trade-route" has 

 resumed its former monotonous regularity. 



Elsewhere the sand- wastes are clothed, especially in their 

 deeper dells and hollows, with cistus-scrub or tamarisk, and 

 the stone-pine (Pinus pinea) somehow finds sustenance , 

 and even luxuriates. How plant-life can survive on the rem- 

 nants of pulverized rock is a mystery — though here, perhaps, 

 the deep-seated roots strike into alluvial soil below — and no 

 more comprehensible in view of the analogous fact that the 

 vines producing the richest Spanish wines also flourish in 

 equally ungenial soils. The vintages of Jerez are garnered 

 from grapes grown on arid and silicious soil : the strong 

 red wine of Val-de-Penas, so grateful in torrid Spain, 



eggs, on the bare sticks — only once, in each case, have we found the 

 dual number exceeded, viz., M. ictinus, three young, on May 2nd; 

 M. migrans, three eggs, on May 10th. We have found the eggs of 

 'the first-named as early as the closing days of March. 



