390 Mr. A. L. Butler on Birds observed 



vicinity of the stream a capital camping-place and collecting- 

 ground, where birds were abundant. In some places the 

 little river ran twenty yards wide and a foot deep, babbling 

 over grey, water-rounded stones ; in others it formed narrow, 

 dark, deep pools under precipitous faces of rock, and offered 

 me the delightful luxury of a swim in cool water. On both 

 sides of the Khor rose high, rocky hills, intersected by little 

 winding valleys descending to the stream. The hills them- 

 selves were very barren and almost entirely composed of 

 rock, but along the stream there was plenty of cover, chiefly 

 consisting of fringes of various thorny acacias and of tamarisks 

 forming dense thickets. The stream teemed with a tiny fish, 

 Cyprinodon dispar, of which the sexes are so unlike in 

 appearance that I at first imagined that they were two quite 

 different species. They were literally in millions; I have 

 never seen water so full of fishes anywhere, and their 

 presence in every little stagnant pool, as well as in the main 

 stream, doubtless accounted for the almost total absence of 

 mosquitoes. I saw one albino of this fish, but, though I 

 tempted him repeatedly to swim over a submerged handker- 

 chief, he always eluded the raising of this primitive net. In 

 the deeper, darker pools water-tortoises, Pelomedusa galeata, 

 moved slowly about or scuttled in and out of rocky crevices ; 

 at dusk they came out to the shallows. They were very 

 numerous, and I counted thirty, and captured thirteen for the 

 Giza Zoological Gardens, on my last evening. A toad, Bufo 

 dodsoni, was plentiful under stones along the water's edge, and 

 a bluish lizard with an orange-red head, the name of which I 

 do not remember, was common and conspicuous on the rocks. 

 Of mammals in this neiglibourhood, the principal was the 

 Nubian Ibex, which was fairly plentiful on the larger hills ; 

 I shot one on Jebel Bawati, a good male with horns of 38^ 

 inches. The Isabelline Gazelle was met with here and there 

 in valleys among the hills, but was not very plentiful in this 

 particular locality. I obtained specimens of that large-eared, 

 slender-limbed Fox, Vulpes famelica^ of the pretty, but evil- 

 smelling Zorilla {Ictonyx ery threes), of a Hyrax {Procavia 

 ruficeps), a' Spiny Mouse, and a Gerbil. 



