190 Letters, Extracts, and Notes. 



occasion. The birds seemed to have lost their usual 

 instinct o£ direction. They roosted for the night under 

 the awnings of the bridge deck, and many of them came 

 into the music room, and even into the lower cabins of 

 the vessel. At the first streak of dawn the next morning 

 almost all of the birds set ofi', steering almost due south- 

 west, but some of the Swallows were so tired and utterly 

 done up as to be unable to fly and remained on their perches 

 under tbe awnings until they collapsed, falling off one by 

 one and dying. There were three or four different kinds of 

 Swallows in the same flock, some had black throats, some 

 bronze, some white. Some had the long pointed tail, with a 

 large white spot on each tail-feather and a few white 

 feathers on the back, whilst many of the birds had the short 

 tail, as seen in Indian House-Swallows and Martins. The 

 Swallows were also accompanied by several yellow Wagtails, 

 five or six Doves, and a few Hawks, which occasionally 

 picked up a tired Swallow. We tried to revive some of the 

 birds as they dropped helplessly on deck by giving them a 

 little water — it did revive them for a time, but they soon 

 died. I have been up and down the Red Sea eight or ten 

 times per year during the last thirty years, but never before 

 saw so many birds on passage, nor have I ever before seen a 

 Swallow unable to proceed on its way after a night's rest on 

 the ship. The weather was exceedingly hot at the time, but 

 all other conditions were normal. The birds were all fully 

 feathered and in good condition ; there was a considerable 

 amount of droppings from them, shewing that they could not 

 have been very long without food. 



I am. Sirs, your obedient servant, 



W. H. Haughton, 

 Aden, October 3rd, 1908. Commander, R.N.R., 



Commander P. & O. s.s. ' Persia.' 



Sirs, — During a stay of thirteen months in Russian 

 Turkestan (from Sept. 1907 to Oct. 1908) and the 

 Khanate of Bokhara, I formed a collection of about 730 

 specimens of birds and mammals in the Zarafshan Valley. 



