478 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXVIII. 
tected from March till end of August. I came across young ones in Apri! as well 
as in July. Ths following bags may be interesting :— 
SS1Q2NGi eas .- Near Kut el-Amarah ne Be Fic sane 
10-11-13-1-17 aie do. y0 ete sc he ook 
19-20-24-2-17 <e do. ae sé we Sc Se e26 
4-3-17 “s ..Noar Aziziyeh (R. Tigris) Cs 
2-3-7-17 .. .. Euphrates Barrage (Shot as N. H. Specimens) sae) 
27-30-9-17 . .Shatr-el-Adhaim ia wa te he ee 
6-7-10-16-10-17 .. do. ie ts “e A x0 oie 
On 4th February 1918 near Samarra while on the march 3 hares broke through 
our column and a sepoy killed one with the butt of his rifle. This specimen I 
sent the B. N. H. 8. andat thotime Inoted that it was very rufous on the 
flanks and had fine thick fur. 
It was a very common occurrence when on the line of march for the pro- 
tecting troops on the flanks to put up numerous hares which invariably became 
completely bewildered and charged through the marching column. I frequently 
noticed that when hares ran off across the open plain, they always lay up in the 
first piece of cover, however small, or in a small ditch, nullah or broken piece of 
ground whore they could ba at once followed up and brought to bag. Often one 
tiny patch of open scrubby cover near tha river would contain the best part of 
a dozen hares. In very thick cover they were scarce. 
Fents CaRAcAL.—The Caracal,—I never saw any species of this animal in 
Mesopotamia, but while in camp at Bait-al-khalifa, Samarra—a bit of a 
naturalist amongst our Cis-frontier Pathans described an animal to me which 
fitted in with the description of a Lynx or CaracaL, and which he said lived 
in a den leading off a deep hole amongst the ruins, and he used to sit up by 
night and try and shoot it. An animal of sorts did live there, but I am quite sure 
it was not a Caracal, as the only food supply near by was one covey of see-see. 
The only Caracal I shot in India was on the Indus near Dera Ismail 
Khan. It was put up in thick cover where small game was abundant. 
GazeLLa MARICA.—The Marica Gazelle.—As far as I can remember, not having 
my complete diaries handy, I first of all came across a Gazelle in Mesopotamia 
in the area between Baghdad on the Tigris and Feluja on the Euphrates, in 
the middle of March 1917, but as I never secured any specimens I can offer no 
remarks on their size, markings, or type of horns. Gazelle were also very plenti- 
ful near Feluja, but west of the Euphrates, and evidently dropped their young 
during April and early May, at which season the Arabs used to bring dozens round 
our camps to sell to the troops as pets. As far as I could make out, single youngs- 
ters were just as common as pairs. Out of a couple of dozen that I tried to bring 
up with the aid of goats only two survived for any length of time, and in fact I 
don’t think more than half-a-dozen was successfully reared in the whole brigade. 
A large number died because they were brought in too young, and we eventually 
discovered that the only hope of saving the youngsters was to turn them loose 
with the foster mother and leave them to look after themselves entirely. They 
began to graze very soon after they were born and quickly became exceedingly 
tame. They strayed far when feeding, but a whistle would bring them galloping 
and bounding in at once. To me, what was a most extraordinary thing, was the 
way the little beggars swim. Two, that a Subadar of mine had successfully 
reared, were out grazing near one of our posts which protected a bridge over a 
large irrigation canal. The two Gazelle, who were then possibly 6 weeks’ old, 
were feeding on the other side of the canal, which had steep banks over 30 feet 
high, with a perpendicular drop of a few feet at the bottom and was 40 to 50 
feet wide and about 10 feet deep. The Subadar whistled, and the little beggars 
unhesitatingly plunged into the stream and swam across swiftly with the great- 
est of ease! I was absolutely amazed at the performance. The little buck died 
of some disease in the head or perhaps from some animals getting into the brain 
