258 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST, SOCIETY, Vol. XXVIII, 
Livesey. Can the officials of the Society—already rather over-burdened 
with work—find the time to collate and sift all the information obtained 
and publish annually a fifth booklet giving the results obtained from the issue 
of the previous four ? We doubt if, with the size of our staff limited by 
necessity to the meagre size of our purse, we could undertake that such revising 
work would be done by our staff, but in the old days of the Society we used 
to rely, and in the present days we still rely, on the help of members of the 
Society who are specially qualified in any particular subject and we see no 
reason why with the assistance of so many ornithological members of the 
Society we should not undertake the work. 
Now as to the practicability of the foregoing 
The above remarks may hold good for a country like England where the 
area is comparatively limited, and where there are a comparatively large 
number of people who take an _ intelligent interest in Natural 
History, and there are many Field Clubs and other associatiens which 
go in for observing Bird Life. Out here in India, conditions are on 
a different scale. Firstly there are few Natural History Societies; the 
number of Bird skins obtained by these Societies from their individual 
members or by the various Museums is an almost negligible percentage 
of the number shot. Further the rumber of individual collectors who go in 
for systematic collecting and who are able to recognise and identify the 
different species correctly is extremely limited. How many men we wonder 
are there in the whole of India who are interested enough to undertake 
work on the lines suggested ? The best method of bird protection is the 
law against the export of plumage, which, though it is evaded often, is a 
deterrent against the indiscriminate slaughter of bright plumaged birds, 
etc. The large majority of our members merely take a sporting interest in 
the subject and most of the skins sent us for identification are common 
game birds. Therefore apart from the skins obtained by our collectors. 
from areas where they are wanted the collecting of bird skins by members 
of the Society is not likely to effect the issue We may be wrong and we 
shall be glad to hear from members on the above subject and if the scheme is 
popular we hope to start it next year. We are not reproducing the suggest- 
ed map here but will send particulars to members interested in the idea. 
The series of papers on the Fauna of Mesopotamia and parts of Persia are now 
almost completed and it will not be long before they are published in book form. 
This has been made possible by the foresight of the Mesopotamian Government 
which, realising the necessity of such a publication and the expense a separate 
publication would entail, arranged with the Society that 1,000 extra copies of 
each paper should be printed off as issued and kept until such time as the whole 
series was completed and the different papers could be bound together in one 
whole. We take this opportunity of expressing our thanks to the authors of 
the various papers and to the members of the Society whose exertions in a diffi- 
cult country, within a sphere where War operations were active, made the writing 
of the papers possible and provided through the medium of our journal such a 
mass of new and valuable information on the Natural History of Iraq. 
It is with great pleasure that we issue in this number the first of a series of 
popular papers by Col. Ward on the Game of Kashmir. Col. Ward is one whose 
knowledge of Natural History in Kashmir is unrivalled and who knows how to 
convey his knowledge in a way which interests his reader and encourages in him 
the desire not merely to read more and more about the delights of a Shikari and 
Naturalist in Kashmir but to partake himself of its actual pleasures. 
Readers of the Quarterly Review who remember the delightful article which 
appeared in the issue for July 1920 will be glad to know that the next 
yumber of the Journal (to be issued we hope in January) will contain a paper by 
Harold Russell on Indian Parasitic Flies. Mr. Russell in his last letter writes 
