MISS M. L. BUXTON ON A TRIP TO SPAIN. 
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I. 
A TRIP TO SPAIN, APRIL, 1908. 
By Miss M. L. Buxton. 
Read zbth May, 1908. 
I have been asked to read a paper to-night on a tour I have 
just been making in Spain. I had been there about three 
years ago, and have felt irresistibly drawn ever since to 
return there. So, this year, finding a cousin of mine equally 
anxious to visit that country, we made a plan to go in April. 
We sailed on the 3rd, seeing very little on the way out until 
we rounded Cape St. Vincent, when we came across numbers 
of Lesser Black Backed Gulls and Gannets, in both mature 
and immature plumage. 
I had been given an introduction to some English people 
in Jerez — which is the place near Cadiz, where all the sherry 
is made. These people own a large shooting estate on the 
further banks of the Guadalquivir, and I was told that they 
would probably be able to show 11s some Bustards in the 
cornland round Jerez, even if we saw nothing else. 
We landed at Gibraltar on April 8th, and the next day 
started off by rail to Jerez, at 6.30 a.m. Though it is a distance 
of only some 160 miles, it took us over twelve hours to accom- 
plish. Spanish trains, like Spanish people, move slowly, and 
think to-morrow will do just as well as to-day- 
The first few hours the line is one of the most beautiful 
I have ever seen, running through the cork forest, and from 
thence rising through broken rocky ground up to Ronda, 
a beautiful old Moorish town, situated on the edge of a deep 
chasm. The flowers all the way are wonderful ; mostly 
Cistus of different sorts — pink, yellow and white — the most 
showy being a large white one, growing eight or ten feet high. 
