191 
Letters , Extracts , and Notes. 
The Zarafshan is a typical river of inner Asia, having its 
source amongst giant mountain-ranges, and eventually 
drying up in a sandy desert. It follows that there is a great 
variety in temperature and flora, and therefore a corre¬ 
spondingly great variety of bird and animal life. The country 
that I actually worked varied in altitude from 150 ft. to 
18,000 ft. above the sea-level. There is practically no wild 
forest in the Zarafshan Valley, and the fauna will, I think, 
be found to belong rather to Northern Afghanistan than to 
Turkestan proper. 
Animal life was especially numerous in the sandy deserts 
and tamarisk-swamps. A very strong and sudden north¬ 
ward migration of birds in the spring was also of great 
interest. 
It appears that no Englishman has ever made a syste¬ 
matic collection of birds anywhere in this neighbourhood, 
and Severtzoff’s work seems to include little about the 
south-western corner of Turkestan. The Transcaspian 
Railway made travel and work in the plains very easy, 
but the upper Zarafshan Valley is difficult of access, 
and the mountain-paths are particularly difficult and even 
dangerous. 
I also made a journey into the South-western Tian-Shan to 
the high plateaux of Chatir-kul and Ak-sai, north of 
Kashgar. On these high steppes bird-life was very scarce 
indeed, and mammal-life was almost entirely absent, except 
for marmots and one species of vole. But on the mountain- 
ranges which surround the plateaux there is a greater 
amount of life. 
The difficulties of travel, the lack of fuel and of fodder, 
made collecting exceedingly difficult, and I found all the 
birds at the end of August in such a bad state of plumage 
that they were scarcely worth the trouble of preserving. 
I am, Sirs, yours &c.. 
The American College, D. Carruthers. 
Beirut, Syria, 
Nov. 3rd, 1908. 
