504 Mr. H. F. Witherby— Ornithological 



although they were continually falling, did not seem to 

 damage themselves very much. It was otherwise with the 

 baggage. When the mule fell so did the baggage, but after 

 a time we got quite hardened to seeing a box of skins or 

 photographic plates gaily bumping down from rock to rock. 

 Curiously enough (perhaps on account of our elaborate 

 packing), nothing was ever seriously damaged, except the 

 boxes themselves, and we luckily had a reserve of them. 

 Donkeys would have been more serviceable than mules, 

 perhaps, in some of the wooded country. The packs on the 

 mules were continually torn off by overhanging trees, under 

 which donkeys would generally have passed untouched. As 

 to the muleteers, perhaps I had better say nothing. They 

 are supposed to be a tine race of men in Persia. Physically 

 they are, but otherwise, in my experience, they are not. I 

 wiil not detail the little annoyances to which we were put 

 by our muleteers. When every other inducement failed, 

 one's end had to be gained by physical force. 



Roughly our journey consisted of a march of some 800 

 miles in the country comprised within a triangle drawn 

 with a line between Bushire and Shiraz as its base and the 

 Kuh-i-Dinar as its apex. 



From an ornithological point of view the journey was 

 interesting and instructive. The number of species in any 

 one locality was small, and birds, on the whole, were scarce, 

 but the continually varying altitudes and the abrupt changes 

 in the character of the country produced a striking variety 

 in the bird-life, and this was so apparent that I decided, 

 after a few days' travelling, to march frequently and cover a 

 variety of tracts. A few birds (e. g. Merops viridis, Capri- 

 mulgus cegyptius) which we saw in the coast-region we did 

 not see again, but most of the birds common near the coast 

 were also common in the valleys up to an altitude of 5500 

 feet or so. And up to this altitude the changes in the 

 bird-life seemed to me to be due, with few exceptions, to 

 the varied eharacter of the country rather than to climatal 

 conditions. Above that altitude, however, a number of 

 birds (e g. Argija hut tout, Bumesia gracilis lepida, Pycno- 



