Bird-Life of the Anatolian Plateau. 369 



The Kara Dagh, 



Having given some account of the plains, I will now add 

 some general notes on the Kara Dagh, as an example of 

 the smaller mountain-ranges of the plateau. It should be 

 remembered that in Asia Minor there ate many Kara Daghs 

 — the nanae signifies simply " black mountain/' That par- 

 ticular Kara Dagh in which about five weeks of our time 

 were spent lies about fifty miles south-east of Konia, and 

 it was here that most of my collecting and observing 

 was done. 



This Kara Dagh, then, is a volcanic mountain-pile rising 

 like an island from the surrounding plains, which are 

 hereabouts at an elevation of some 3300 feet. It is made 

 up of a central mass several miles in diameter surrounded 

 by a number of outlying hills of more or less conical shape. 

 The central mass consists of the rim of a great cup-shaped 

 hollow or crater, in outline a short oval, of which the major 

 axis, some two miles long, runs from south-west to north- 

 east. The bottom of the crater is a grassy basin, at whose 

 lowest point, near the north-east end, lies a small muddy 

 pond, the altitude of which is about 5000 feet. On the 

 south-east side the rim of the crater is formed by a lofty 

 ridge culminating at its more northerly end in Mahalitch 

 Dagh, the highest point of the whole group, 7300 feet above 

 sea-level. Other lofty peaks help to encircle the hollow, but 

 on the side opposite Mahalitch Dagh there is a wide low 

 gap, where the rim rises only three or four hundred feet 

 above the bottom. 



At the time of our visit the whole place was practically 

 devoid of water. Only two diminutive springs were found, in 

 addition to the pond in the crater and a larger loch with 

 beds of reeds in a hollow at the base of an outlying hill 

 to the north. Dry water-courses alone bore witness to 

 the floods occasioned by the melting snows in spring, a 

 patch of which lingered on in a sheltered gully on the 

 crater-wall below Mahalitch till the very end of June. In 



