Notes of a Journey through Syria i^c. 417 



stand its claim to appear in Dresser's 'Birds of Europe/ 

 except that my friend thought it a pity that it should be left 

 any longer without a memoir. 



Elsewhere on the Euphrates I frequently started the Black 

 Stork, which seems a very solitary bird, as I never put up 

 two together, I know few more attractive sights than a 

 Black Stork suddenly rising from a mud-bank in front, and 

 then working his legs behind him as a rudder, while he 

 circles round you till he has got well overhead, so as to take 

 stock of the intruder from a safe distance. 



At Carchemish, in the great Hittite mound, the employes 

 of the British Museum have been making sundry excavations. 

 These have been only moderately prolific, the chief objects 

 of interest, and the Hittite slabs, having been found, not in 

 the mound, but under the Greek city of Hierapolis below. 

 But their labours have not been lost on the Bee-eaters, who 

 have found the sides of the shafts most convenient for nest- 

 ing, the debris being soft and easily penetrated. Both species, 

 M. apiaster and M. persicus, were breeding here in colonies 

 in the same shafts. But the moment they quitted the mound 

 they held no further intercourse. M. apiaster hunted high 

 in mid air, or hovered over the river and took flights beyond 

 it. Its congener at once betook himself less adventurously 

 to the plain and ruins beneath, and there skimmed close to 

 the surface, perching continually on the stones which strew 

 the site of the ancient metropolis. 



When from Mesopotamia we turned north and, crossing 

 the Euphrates at Samosait, entered Southern Armenia, we 

 were at once surrounded by a very difi"erent fauna and flora 

 from that which we had left. Instead of the yellow rose o£ 

 North Syria, or the powerfully scented white rose of the 

 Euphrates, we were in the home of the sweetbriar. Instead 

 of the Isabel "VVheatear [Saxicola isabellina), which, with the 

 Calaudra and Short-toed Larks, was almost the only winged 

 denizen of the plains, where it is in amazing numbers, every 

 turn, every clump of trees now introduced to us some old 

 or new feathered friend. Not that I saw one which has not 

 been commented on or reported by Mr. Danford ; but there 



