Letters, Extracts, Notices, 5fc. 483 



steering northward in perfect silence ; at least nothing was 

 audible, and they were at too great an elevation for the 

 swish of their wings to be detected. I fancy they must 

 have been Starlings. 



Early next morning I mounted my horse and rode about 

 among the, to me, familiar thickets, where, in years gone 

 by, 1 had reaped a rich ornithological harvest. My old 

 friends, the habitual denizens of this tropical oasis, were 

 there, as of yore, but not a migrant could I see. There 

 were Bulbuls, Cisticoles, Bush-Babblers, and Snipes in 

 abundance, but not a Turtle-Dove, Quail, or Shrike could I 

 detect. After a long day by the Dead-Sea shore, I returned, 

 an hour and a half before sunset, to our camp. Every step of 

 my horse put up one or two Quails, which dropped, evidently 

 utterly exhausted, after a flight of three or four yards. Every 

 bush held two or three of Emberiza ccesia ; the Great Grey 

 Shrike was sitting solemnly on a bare twig, with a com- 

 manding outlook, as though he had never stirred since I left 

 the spot three years ago ; while the common Turtle-Dove 

 absolutely swarmed in countless numbers on the ground and 

 trees alike. Now all these birds must have arrived during 

 the course of the day, for they could not have escaped me in 

 the morning, and several of them (such as the Quail and the 

 Bunting) do not remain to breed in the valley, but nest in 

 the uplands. 



There can be no doubt, as I have before remarked, that 

 this narrow gorge of the Jordan Valley is one of the great 

 arterial migration-routes from East and Central Africa to. 

 Eastern Europe and Western Asia. 



Many years ago I described in your pages the migrations 

 of Swallows and other birds by this route. It would seem 

 as though the caravans of migrants muster at the great lakes, 

 and then from the valley of the Nile cross the low-lying 

 narrow flat to Akabah, where, uniting with those which have 

 skirted the Red-Sea shore, they follow up the Akabah, the 

 Jordan Valley, and the Orontes Valley to the Taurid range, 

 where, about the head-waters of the Euphrates, they disperse 

 east and west to their summer-quarters. 



