2 Dr. R. B. Sharpe on Birds 



the collecting of natural history specimens. At that time 

 it was impossible to get any shot for collecting purposes, so 

 he was forced to fall back on his early experience with the 

 catapult ; his first collection, however, obtained with that 

 weapon alone, resulted in many skins of mammals and 

 81 of birds (cf. Bull. B. O. Club, xii. p. 2). Seimund, 

 having been invalided home, re-enlisted on his restoration 

 to health, and was joined by his fellow -taxidermist 

 Claude Grant. The present collection is the result of their 

 united labours towards the end of the war. The field- 

 notes enclosed within square brackets are contributed by 

 our two troopers, of whose zeal in the cause of natural 

 history we, of the British Museum, are not a little proud, 

 especially as many of the specimens were obtained at a time 

 when active fighting was going on and at considerable 

 risk. The particular value of the collection lies in the 

 fact that the birds were obtained from month to month, and 

 that special care was taken to obtain moulting specimens. 

 The observations on the latter, I trust, will prove to be of 

 some interest. 



Seimund describes Deelfontein as a small hamlet in the 

 centre of Cape Colony, about thirty miles south of De Aar ; 

 it is situated in a mountainous district at an elevation of 

 some 4700 feet. It came into prominence during the Boer 

 war, owing to its selection as the site of the Imperial 

 Yeomanry Hospital. The hamlet comprised four houses 

 and a pumping-station, where all the trains took in water 

 before proceeding northwards. The vleys or valleys are very 

 barren, with here and there a stunted tree, while a few 

 tracts of bush-land may occasionally be found in the neigh- 

 bourhood of the station, of about 500 by 50 yards in extent. 

 The red soil is of a sandy character, with patches of stony 

 gravel. The majority of the bushes are of a thorny nature, 

 seldom exceeding fifteen feet in height, but the karoo bush is 

 heathery in appearance, the plants being about eighteen inches 

 apart, except where the soil is more fertile and the growth 

 more dense. 



