"THE MEDITERRANEAN NATURALIST 
223 
mountain .sinks abruptly to the wide valley or 
plain of tlie Caster. The plateau was apparently 
about three miles long, by half that in width, in 
parts somewhat marshy, in others showing a gra- 
velly soil, mixed with quartz, and here and there 
cultivated with corn or fruit, inclosed by fences. 
We crossed it to a clump of lofty elms, at the very 
brow of the height where a deep ravine opens, 
leading the eye down to the Caster valley. Here 
stood a low shed now abandoned, but an old 
Moslem cemetery at its side showed that the side 
had at one time been peopled. 
This spot commands a magnificent view over 
the Caster plain, bounded by the grand serrated 
range of the Tmolus, one conical peak towering in 
the north, with another more to the east still 
capped with snow, though May was near its close. 
The plain beneath was hazy with mist and in 
parts thrown into deep shade by heavy clouds, so 
that it was not easy to distinguish the objects 
within our range of vision; but a ray of sunshine 
now and then breaking through the clouds, brought 
some features of the scene into bright relief — a 
tower, a village, or the glittering bends of the 
Caster, as it wound through the plain. The deep 
ravine at our feet carried the eye down to the 
town of Boudemiaamid its fig-groves, which yield 
some of the choicest fruit that Smyrma exports. 
Further c u't in the plain lay Tbyra (alias Tvra or 
Tireh) and Baindyr, flourishing centres of agricul- 
tural industry, now connected by railway with the 
port of Smyrna, but neither ot them visible to us 
from this point, though Eudemish was distingui- 
shable on the further side of the plain, together 
with the remains of the ancient Hyptepa on the 
lower slopes of Tmolus. 
“lateriget arduus alto 
Tmolus in adscensu; clivoque extentus utroquc 
Sardibus hine, illino parvis finitur Hypsepia.” 
Ovid.. Met., II, 150. 
From a higher point on the Messogis somewhat 
more to the east, we obtained a new and better 
bird’s-eye view of the country at four feet. The 
Caster was seen flowing, not directly westward 
from the mountains which form the eastern boun- 
dary of the plain, as hitherto it has always been 
represented on the maps, but apparently from the 
southern foot of the Tmolus, taking at first a 
south-easterly direction, through a narrow valley 
separated from the great plain by a low range of 
hills, which terminated in a sharp promontory at 
our feet. Doubling this promontory it assumed a 
north-westerly course as it entered the wide valley 
or plain to which it has given its name. The 
narrow river-basin is the Cilbian valley, called 
“Keller Ovassi” by the Turks, and the low range 
which bounds it on the west is doubtless the 
“Gilbiana Juga” ofPliny (N. H., v. 31 ) in which 
he tells us the Cayster takes its rise, although the 
statement, so far as I am aware, has not yet been 
verified. The inhabitants of this valley were 
distinguish in ancient times as the Cilbiani 
Inferiores et Superiores, each tribe of whom had a 
distinct coinage and must therefore have had a 
city where its money was coined. The Cilbian 
plain is also described by Strabo as extensive, 
weil inhabited, and fertile. (XIII. 4 . 13 ) 
It was the great elevation we had reached which 
enabled us, by the bird’s-eye view it afforded, to 
make this discovery of the upper course of the 
Cayster, the credit of which belongs entirely to 
Mr. Puiser, who communicated his discovery to 
Mr. Kiepert, for the emendation of his maps of 
Asia Minor. 
( to be continued. ) 
An Ancient Birdland. 
For ages before its occupation by man, New 
Zealand swarmed with great wingless birds, which 
found here no carnivorous enemies, but an abun- 
dance of vegetable food. The Moas not only 
existed in vast numbers and for thousands of 
years, but had such diversity of form as to em- 
brace no less than seven genera, containing twenty- 
five species — a remarkable fact which is unpa- 
ralleled in any other part of the world. The 
commonest kinds in the north Island were only 
from two and one-half to four feet high. Those 
of the South Island were mostly from four to six 
feet tall, while the giant forms, reaching twelve 
and thirteen feet, were always rare. Immense 
deposits of Moa bones have been found in localities 
to which they appear to have been washed from 
the hills in tertiary times. Skeletons on the 
surface of the ground, with skin and ligaments 
still attached, have given the impression that these 
