142 
XATURE NOTES. 
crust and scraping your ankle against the sharp little splinters. 
(Such are the charms of “ cat-ice ! ”) 
I remember how we crossed many of these frozen bridges, 
and how the spears of ice rose from that polished field, and 
again, how the icicles hung down from their cold shelf. They 
were as fine and as long as the hair of an ice maiden. The 
stream was dammed in places, too, and broke its snowy banks 
and ran over the meadows, where again the frost held it ; and 
the stones on the stream bed were coated with glittering ice, so 
that when the water rushed over them it beat strange tunes 
against their sides. But often that ice-music was more like 
a peal of muffled bells than anything else. So on one walk we 
crossed many bridges and could always hear the torrent groan- 
ing beneath us. It was pretty to see the alders fringed with 
rime, as fine as the down upon a moth’s wing. Then a water- 
ouzel scudded past us up towards the glacier, and he brushed 
the crystals with his snowy breast. But the sun had set and 
the glacier fields high up were starting into sudden flame 
where the after-glow had awakened them, and down beyond the 
western mountain a mock-sun arose like a golden column from 
out the mist. It was too cold to linger any longer on those 
fascinating bridges of ice, and we turned our footsteps homewards. 
March 4th. — March has come, and still the frost-flowers 
grow beside the lake, and three feet of snow cover those 
other flowers which made their buds in autumn and are only 
waiting for the sunlight and Fohn wind to free them from their 
load. For the heather buds and gentians have their eyes 
tightly closed, and anemones have laid their downy heads to 
sleep. They are all waiting now for the snow to disappear, when 
they will suddenly wake to the joy of springtime and will greet 
us with the delight of long-lost friends. 
In April on a very hot bank the star gentian {Gentiana veyiia) 
has been bold enough to open, and beside him grows the yellow 
coltsfoot with moisture oozing from his stem. Heather banks 
are deepening in colour up in the ravine, and just above the level 
of the pines the spring anemone {A . vernalis) shakes his downy 
wings like a young bird, and bares his golden breast to the sun. 
This lilac anemone, or Basque flower, grows always on those 
banks which are most exposed to the sun, and mingles with that 
ever-green arctostaphylos or bear-berry about whose honey the 
bees are so greedy. Then there are oxlips in the meadows, 
crocuses as white as snowfall, and soldanellas shaking their 
dainty bells, and grey violets with delicious fragrance, are 
wedged in the granite boulders and nod from the crevices of the 
rock to the primulas. The mountain sides are carpeted with 
polygala white and red, with cup gentians (G. acaidis) a.nd poten- 
tillas and auriculas, and the tortoiseshell butterflies and clouded 
yellow are floating over them. 
The Fohn wind is greatly responsible for this sudden awaken- 
ing. He it was who first in March loosed the snow upon the 
