illipote, a favourite station--Zaitoon trees, or naked Bakkeins.
Haematornis I have seen feeding on the ground, this species has the same
voice as that of the genus generally.

The yellowish _Bunting-like_ water-wagtail, is very common just now: it
occurs in wheat fields; flight, chirp, and mode of getting up when
disturbed just as in the Buntings.

Weather very unsettled, heavy rain and thunder last night, and now
threatening a gale.

_21st_.--Returned towards Pushut: a Lanius, but not the one shot, was
seen near the road in bushes.

_22nd_.--Of the four red-billed Shrikes, two are male and female, sexes
alike, stomach fleshy like that of Haematornis, but food entirely
vegetable: the two female stomachs contained each a seed of the _Bukkein_
(Melia): the two males contained fragments of buds, perhaps of a willow,
but not a vestige of an insect, so their swooping and sallying is a mere
analogical representation of Merops. In Haematornis contents of stomach
chiefly vegetable, partly of insects.

_26th_.--Very rainy and unsettled weather, thunder and lightning.

_27th_.---Clearing up: heavy rain in some parts of the night, otherwise
fine.

_28th_.--A beautiful morning. Went to Kooner, distance twelve to
thirteen miles: for three miles the road was dangerous but tolerably
decent, no defiles being passed, in which murderers were likely to lurk,
very little difference in seasons between this and Pushut.

_29th_.--Returned again to Pushut. The country about Pushut is one sheet
of cultivation, studded with trees; so thick are these that few villages
are discernible in consequence. Nothing particularly notable occurred,
except that a tulip is common in the fields about Kooner, but not found
in those about Pushut: it occurs also with Amaryllideae, which is
likewise a stranger to Pushut. What is the reason of the ruined forts so
common in this country? One would think that it were useless to pull
down or destroy a good fort, when it is the intention of building
another, so that they are scarcely to be accounted for from a succession
of conquerors.

The country has, and always will be, a distracted one. I observe that in
all parts approaching mountains, in which the chief danger of robbery
exists, that there are generally people and especially boys tending
cattle, so that they must probably be familiar with robberies and
murders, and seeing these done so openly, so easily, and so securely,
they may well be imagin