AVES. 227 



paper by Mr. Wyatt,' appended to the 'Ordnance Survey of Sinai, 1869,' 

 should be consulted, and, taken in connection with the great work of 

 Canon Tristram, leaves little to be discovered. There are, however, 

 parts of Sinai hardly visited even still, and the Widy 'Arabah, upwards 

 of a hundred miles in length and hardly known to naturalists, has not yet 

 been explored at the best season. This widy is the most interesting 

 ground by far, except, perhaps, the Ghor es Safieh. All the desert 

 species of Sinai may, I believe, be obtained there, and several of the most 

 interesting Dead Sea species. Desert larks and chats, of about ten 

 species, occurred in this widy. Hey's partridge, Tristram's grakle, 

 Palestine bulbuls, hopping thrushes, sunbirds, fantail ravens, rose-finches, 

 and others, some of them of extreme rarity and interest in geographical 

 distribution, were observed either in this valley or some of its system 

 close by. As with the plants, so with the birds, this valley has afforded 

 a low-lying highway, easily traversed in bygone times when the climate 

 was moister and vegetation more luxuriant, from Sinai, Egypt and the 

 hill valley on the one side ; from the Hedjaz and Happy Araby on 

 the other, to the rich oases around the Dead Sea. Their descendants — 

 sometimes modified, sometimes unchanged, and sometimes there alone 

 surviving — still remain in favoured spots, and chiefly in the southern 

 Gh6r. The rodents tell the same history, a history which still stands in 

 need of much detail before it can be thoroughly dealt with. 



About a third of the above list of species are British, chiefly summer 

 migrants here, and occurring in Sinai and Palestine as winter visitants. 

 The remainder of the Sinai birds will include the most interesting portion 

 of the group, the deseri birds of Sinai, and of these I give a separate 

 list. They are probably all residents. One or two which have been 

 obtained only on the confines of Sinai are included in brackets. Those 

 few which are not mentioned in the foregoing account are taken from 

 Mr. Wyatt's list above mentioned. The total number of species of birds 

 which visit the peninsula may be probably estimated at a hundred. 



Saxicola monacha, Temm. 



S. deserti, Temm. 



S. leucopygia, Brehm. (et S. leucocephala, Brehm.). 



S. lugens, Licht, 



29 — 2 



