408 Mr. F. C. Selous on 
deep cup, and contained four eggs of a very pale pinky 
white sparsely dotted over with small black spots. In the 
course of the afternoon we saw a pair of Northern Nightin¬ 
gales (Daulias philomela), but I was very much disappointed 
at the extreme scarcity of small birds of all kinds in this very 
inviting-looking hunting-ground. 
The next morning we again hunted for nests near Aidin 
for five hours, but were absolutely unsuccessful, as we did not 
find a single nest. We left by the midday train for Appa, 
which we reached at 5 p.m. Appa is a small Turkish village 
situated at the eastern extremity of the Maimun Dagh— 
Monkey Mountain—and is about 240 miles inland from 
Smyrna. The character of the country is that of wide, arid, 
treeless plains, bounded by mountain-ranges. These plains 
lie at an altitude of about 3000 feet above sea-level. In the 
evening I found two Crested Larks' nests within a mile of the 
station building. I put the birds off both nests, one of which 
contained four and the other five eggs. I also found the nest 
of a Rock-Sparrow (Petronia stulta) in the bank of a railway¬ 
cutting close to the station. We caught the bird on the nest, 
but, though this was just ready for eggs, there were unfortu¬ 
nately none in it. The hole at the end of which this nest had 
been placed had been bored four feet into the sandy bank. 
It looked just like a Kingfisher's nesting-hole, but whether it 
had been made by the Rock-Sparrows themselves I cannot 
say. It may have been made by a Bee-eater, though against 
this is the fact that there were no other holes near it. There 
was a large cavity at the end of the bore-hole, and in this a 
bulky nest had been built of grass lined with feathers. 
I had come to Appa because, while hunting wild goats 
on the Maimun Dagh in the early spring of 1897, I had 
noticed a number of Cranes (Grus communis ) feeding on the 
marshy ground on the edge of a large salt-lake which extends 
from the foot of the Monkey Mountain to the opposite range 
of the Zuut Dagh. This salt-lake, from which the water 
almost entirely evaporates in hot weather, must be nearly 
20 miles in circumference, and is called by the Turks of the 
neighbourhood “ Adji toos Gol." It was early in March 
