Wildfowl in Seistan 79 



said, " a rat dying of plague on the shore of a lake. 

 His fleas attach themselves to a duck that is 

 making a meal off the unsavoury object. The duck 

 migrates to Seistan, covering the distance in a very 

 few days, and the rest follows." The first cases 

 of plague did actually occur among the fowl-snaring 

 lake-dwellers. The theory seems rather fantastic, 1 

 but considering the extraordinary concatenations 

 of possible events that do happen in nature the 

 life-cycle of the liver-fluke for instance he would 

 be a bold man who would reject it offhand. Let 

 me, however, quit this digression into the regions 

 of plague etiology and say a word about flight 

 shooting. 



An old rhyme says 



" When the wild geese gang out to sea, 

 Fair weather there will surely be." 



And in Seistan, the same holds good about the 

 Hamun. When, on the other hand, the sky takes 

 on a steely blue and the north wind howls and 

 goes on howling, wildfowl come inland and take 

 refuge on rivers, canals, sheltered pools. There 

 was often flood water close to the Consulate, and 

 when the wind was blowing, we used to go out, 



1 It does not at any rate seem more fantastic than the recently 

 evolved theory of the spread of plague over high passes and mountain 

 ranges by the agency of marmois. 



