Tour in Cyprus in 1887. 101 



lighthouse at Cape Gato. The headland is said to be so 

 called from tlie number of cats that at one time ran wild in 

 the neighbourhood. There are none noWj at least I never 

 saw any ; but on two or three occasions I came across places 

 where the ground had been rooted up by pigs. The wild boar, 

 however, does not exist in Cyprus, and these, like the cats, 

 are merely tame animals escaped from civilization. The 

 light is 109 feet above the sea, and is a dioptric of the fourth 

 order, flashing every two minutes, and visible at a distance 

 of twenty miles. The Akrotiri peninsula, at the extremity 

 of which it is placed, is practically uninhabited, and is a wide 

 stretch of barren moorland, which in the neighbourhood of 

 Cape Gato is covered with stunted bushes. Here and there 

 a travesty of a tree is to be seen, with an inclination of 

 branches sufficient to show that the prevailing winds are 

 from the west. 



I stayed ten days at the lighthouse, and was on the whole 

 disappointed with the result. The spring migration was no 

 doubt in full swing, but no birds ever came to the light, and 

 the lighthouse-keeper, a Cypriote Greek, told me that, ex- 

 cepting upon two occasions, he had never known a bird 

 killed. The Spectacled Warblers [Sylvia consjjicillata) , flying 

 with their short jerky flight from one low bush to another, were 

 tolerably plentiful for the first two or three days ; but after- 

 wards they became decidedly less so, having most probably 

 taken their departure for other parts of the island. Although 

 some may remain the winter, a great number of them are no 

 doubt migrants. In Cyprus they appear chiefly to haunt the 

 semi-moorland country such as I have just described, and are 

 fairly common on the great stretch of flat uncultivated land 

 lying between Larnaca and Faraagusta. I have never seen 

 them in the bush-country in the hills, as one sees them in 

 Madeira. I was delighted to meet with the beautiful little 

 Sylvia melanothorax on the first morning after my arrival. 

 I found them in pairs, not plentiful at first, but becoming 

 more so before my departure on the 17tli March. Although 

 I shot them afterwards in many diff"erent places iu the ishuul, 

 from the sea-level up to 2000 feet or more in altitude, I 



