7<N Glaciers of the Pindur and Kuphinee Rivers. [Aug. 



Several were brought in to Candahar, which had been found sitting on 

 the rocks far from any water, and from their offering no resistance to 

 their captors, they had evidently alighted from fatigue, and would pro- 

 bably have perished in a few hours. "When approached, if unable to 

 escape, they open wide the beak and strike at the intruder, making a 

 loud snapping noise as they strike the mandibles together. I had two 

 of these birds alive in a small tank, and have often seen them catch 

 and swallow whole a fish of seven and eight inches in length. It is 

 first caught within the pouch, and then thrown up into the air and 

 caught again so as to bring the head foremost into the pouch and thus 

 swallowed ; the fins of the fish in this case are prevented from offering 

 any impediment to its passage down the throat. They often dip the 

 beak into the water as they sail along, and suffer the pouch to become 

 filled with water ; they then close it, and press the pouch against the 

 breast, by which means the water is gradually expelled at the edges 

 of the closed mandibles, and the water insects, small fish or other prey, 

 are retained and swallowed. 



It is not to be supposed that these are nearly all the birds of the 

 Southern parts of Afghanistan ; but my arduous duties in the Pay and 

 Commissariat Department of Shah Soojah's force prevented my doing 

 more than is above recorded, and you must overlook many omissions as 

 well as scantiness of information, when I assure you that I was general- 

 ly at the desk from sun-rise to sun-set ! 



A Description of the Glaciers of the Pindur and Kuphinee Rivers in 

 the Kwnaon Himalaya. — By Lieut. R. Strachey, Bengal Engineers. 



The existence of Glaciers* in the Himalayas, being apparently still 

 considered a matter of doubt by the Natural Philosophers of Europe, 

 I have thought that some account of two most decided Glaciers, which 

 I have just visited (May 1847) in these mountains, in about Lat. 30° 

 20', may not be uninteresting. 



* For the benefit of those persons, who now read of a Glacier for the first time, I 

 have in an appendix given a short account of their chief peculiarities, which I should 

 recommend them to look at first. 



