Note 3 — BRUTE LIFE IN THE ALPINE REGIONS.[2]

The hot south wind, which, when it sets in, usually in early spring, melts the snow and ice with magical rapidity. In the Grindlewald it often melts, in the course of twelve hours, a bed of snow more than two feet thick. Its agency in this respect is far more rapid and powerful than that of the sun, and in the upper Swiss valleys there is no proper spring until it comes—just as in autumn, in many parts of the Swiss lowlands, it is deemed indispensable to the proper ripening of the grape.