220 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



cated tendrils. A sheaf of corn is also represented ; priests' 

 headgears and twisted scrolls are numerous. All arches have 

 rounded tops ; on one big block of stone there is a curious 

 allegorical carving, representing very vividly two beasts of prey, 

 possibly leopards, attacking what appears to be a Eoe or a Goat. 

 The Turks were expelled in 1770 by a Eussian force under 

 Todleben, who marched into Imeritia at the petition of the king, 

 Solomon I. 



The population of Kutais is about sixty thousand, including 

 a large number of Greeks, Jews, and Armenians, who flourish on 

 manganese. The deposits of pyrolusite at Chanieturi and 

 elsewhere in the neighbourhood supply half the manganese of 

 the world, and Kutais is the focus of the business. The true 

 natives of the district are Imeritians, a branch of the Kartelian 

 or Georgian family; the language is a variant of Georgian. 

 The Imeritians more readily adapt themselves to European 

 costumes and customs than do most Caucasian tribes. They 

 provide, inter alia, most of the -v^aiters for the hotels, from 

 Batum to Baku and Kislovodsk. They are upstanding men, 

 often very tall, swarthy of complexion, and fine, dignified 

 features of a distinctly Semitic type. The bashlyk is the 

 prevailing headdress. I noticed that in Kutais, at least in 

 summer, it is usually worn simply as a Capucine hood, which 

 gives the wearers, with their full, broad foreheads, arched noses, 

 and often flowing beards, the appearance of a mediaeval monk, 

 or of a prophet straight from the Old Testament. A long and 

 shapeless, often very tattered, cherkess completes the illusion. 

 Like all Georgians, they have a marked preference for all black 

 costumes, perhaps because it does not show the dirt, and it is 

 quite a relief to see an occasional dandy, even a ragged one, in a 

 scarlet cherkess, or in one that has once been white. 



The town is pleasantly situated on the bubbling, boiling 

 Eion, as it emerges from the mountains, where, according to 

 tradition, Promotheus was chained. This romantic and 

 picturesque stream can be very angry at flood-times ; between 

 my two visits, in July and June, its swollen waters, turbid from 

 the recent rains, rose with startling suddenness, threatening the 

 three bridges, and carried away bodily a large sawmill that 

 stood upon its banks. It issues from the mountains at the back 



