636 Letters, Extracts^ Notices, S^c. 



to the pages of this Journal is an account of the birds of 

 Southern Afghanistan and Kelat, published in 1889, he has 

 for many years, amidst arduous official work of various kinds, 

 done much by collections and notes to improve our knowledge 

 of Persian and Indian ornithology, and it is to him, directly 

 or indirectly, that we are indebted for a very large part of our 

 present acquaintance with the birds of Persia and Baluchistan. 

 Nor has his attention been confined to birds ; it was by his 

 aid, and chiefly by his personal efibrts, that the fine collection 

 of Persian reptiles was made which was described by Dr. J. 

 Anderson in the ' Proceedings ' of the Zoological Society for 

 1872, and it was to him that the association of the present 

 writer with the Survey of the Perso-Kelat frontier was due, 

 whilst the resulting accounts of the mammals, birds, and 

 reptiles of the country in the second volume of ^Eastern 

 Persia ' owed much of their value to his collections and notes 

 on habits and distribution. 



Oliver Beauchamp Coventry St. John was a member of a 

 family that has long held a distinguished place in English 

 history. His father, the late Captain St. John, of the Madras 

 Army, was a grandson of the tenth Baron St. John. Sir O. 

 St. John was born at Byde, in the Isle of Wight, on March 

 21st, 1837, and wa§ consequently at the time of his death in 

 his 55th year. He received a military education at Addis- 

 combe, and entered the Bengal Engineers in 1856, obtaining 

 his lieutenant's commission in 1858. After four years' 

 service in the N.W. Provinces of India and Oudh, he was 

 appointed to the Persian telegraph service under Captain 

 Patrick Stewart, R.E., and took a leading part, first in estab- 

 lishing and subsequently in maintaining telegraphic com- 

 munication between India and Europe through Persia. He 

 was thus engaged till 1871, with the exception of about a 

 year in 1867-68, when he was placed in charge of the tele- 

 graph in Abyssinia during the British expedition to that 

 country. This service he performed with great success, and 

 for it, on his promotion to a captaincy, he received a brevet 

 majority. In 1871 he was despatched on a special mission 

 to survey the Perso-Kelat frontier, and for some time after 



