146 J. Waterhouse—TZhe Survey Operations in Afghanistan [No. 8, 
or, if in the black soil, among bushes where the soil does not bake and 
erack so much, and he burrows so that his sitting-room is near the surface, 
though approached by passages that are deeper, and he can easily work 
through the roof of it if water troubles him. The Gerbilles about here do 
not seem any less numerous than they did before the rains began. At any 
rate they are still excessively abundant. 
The people use no means for destroying these rats. They seem super- 
stitiously afraid of still more vexing the angry divinity. So they say 
“The rats were sent, and if we kill them, more will come.”’ Or, thinking 
that those who died in the famine have now been born as rats, they say, 
“We did not feed them when they were starving, and now they have come 
back to eat us out.” 
The black-winged Kite (Hlanus ceruleus), feeds on these rats, and is 
now, for the first time in my experience of thirty-three years, abundant in 
this part of the Dakhan, In former years I saw one or two in the course 
of the cold season. But this year I have seen them by dozens in a day 
and they are still here (in July,) and to be found all the way from Ahmedna- 
gar to Bijapur. 
XVITI.—Wotes on the Survey Operations in Afghinistdn in connection 
with the Oampaign of 1878-79. Compiled from Letters and Diaries 
of the Survey officers by Mason J. Watnrnovuse, Assistant Surveyor 
General.—Communicated by Mason-Gunerat J. T. WALKER, B. E., 
c. B., Surveyor General of India. 
(With Map—Plate XVII.) 
The Campaign in Afghanistan has added considerably to our geogra- 
phical and topographical knowledge of that country, thanks to the zeal 
with which the Survey operations were pushed on by the Surveyor General’s 
and Quarter-Master General’s Departments, aided by the Political and 
Military authorities. No less than 18 officers of the Survey of India were 
employed with the three columns—7 with the Quetta Column, 2 with the 
Kuram Valley Column and 4 with the Peshawar Column. 
The operations of the professional survey were also, with the Quetta 
and Kuram Valley Columns, supplemented by the work of regimental and 
staff officers who in some cases were appointed Asst. Field Engineers to 
aid in the Survey, and in others worked independently under the military 
authorities, 
