In this journey, on my second stage, I met a poor prince, Abbas Kuli Khan, who was travelling with his little daughter, aged nine, and a companion, Hadji Ali Akbar, a priest. This priest was a great sportsman, and a very amusing companion. Abbas Kuli Khan was a relative of my friend Abu Seif Mirza, of Hamadan, and introduced himself. He was one of the large number of poor princes of Shiraz. His pension from Government was very irregularly paid, and he was travelling with “kajaweh” (covered paniers) for his little daughter, and a pony on which he and the priest rode alternately. The roads from the commencement of the famine were very unsafe, and they were as glad to increase the force of my caravan as I was to get a reinforcement of two determined well-armed men. The little daughter delighted in the tremendous name of Bēbē Sakineh Sultan Khanum, and was very like a pet monkey, being mischief personified. The presence of these people broke the monotony of the fifteen days’ march to Shiraz. One thing that attracts one’s attention when marching is the road-beetle. These insects seem to be perpetually employed in moving the balls of horse or camel dung to their nests off the road. They exhibit wonderful instinct in their manœuvres to effect this object, and to bury the balls; they also bury themselves at the same time. Their search for the balls of dung is conducted on the wing, and they never seem to touch anything else. When found, the insect alights and proceeds to roll the ball by main force, either standing on its hindmost legs and rolling it as we do casks, or at times placing its head to the ground, and propelling the ball by the hind legs. Many of the insects are trodden underfoot by horses, as they seem impelled by a passion to bury the dung regardless of external circumstances. They vary much in size, from a Barcelona nut to that of a walnut. Through the activity of these insects very little horse-dung, save that which is trodden, is seen on the roads. They work summer and winter, and as one marches in the sun, with one’s eyes on the ground, one is astonished at the myriads of these beetles. At times, too, for about two days in spring, the ground teems with mole crickets. For two days around Meshed-i-Mūrghab, in the neighbourhood of Shiraz, there were such numbers that one would be seen in each space two yards square for several miles; two days after, though I searched for them, I could not find one. Near Ispahan, too, some fortnight afterwards, I found them innumerable, and next day I again failed to find a single individual in the same place. Do they all come out at once, _i. e._ in one or two days?