One morning I heard a great twittering of birds, and on looking out, I saw some thirty sparrows on the top of a half-wall. They were all jumping about in a very excited manner, and opening their beaks as if enraged, screaming and chattering. I was at first at a loss to understand the cause of the commotion, but I saw a pale-yellow coloured snake deliberately advancing towards them from the ornamented wooden window from which he hung. They _all_ appeared quite fascinated, which much surprised me, and none attempted to fly away. The snake did not take the nearest, but deliberately chose one and swallowed him. I, too glad to get rid of one of my buzzing annoyances, got my gun, and, notwithstanding the entreaties of my servants, some of whom wept, assuring me that the reptile was inhabited by the spirit of the late master of the house, I gave him a dose of duck-shot. He was a big snake, some four feet long. I cut him open and extracted the sparrow. After some ten minutes’ exposure to the sun, the bird got up, and, after half an hour, flew away, apparently unhurt. The snake was not a venomous one, nor do we find venomous ones in houses in Persia. Shortly after, a servant of my landlord came, and took away the snake’s body, and all my servants sulked and looked black for a week. But, on speaking to my landlord, an educated man, he laughed, and simply congratulated me, and told me that the clock-winding snake had annoyed him for years. They are supposed to live in pairs, but I only saw the one, and never heard the noise again. The wild ass (“goor-khur”) has been kept as a pet, and even ridden; but they generally begin to be very wild before reaching puberty; of course the adults are quite untamable. They are very rare, and do not generally live long in captivity; they are also very fleet indeed, and a very fine mule is produced by their union with a mare. Rams are kept as pets, and trained to fight, as are bulls. These rams may be seen chained outside the shops of the owners, and on Thursday evenings they are fought, generally for a dish of pillaw. They charge each other with great fierceness, and the one driving the other from the field is proclaimed the winner. The fights are often for considerable sums. The rams wear large leathern collars, having bells attached to them; the collars are ornamented with cowries. Partridges are often allowed to run in gardens, being fed like fowls; they become very tame; they are the red-legged variety. There is now a close time for game generally enforced throughout Persia; this is a wholesome measure of the present Shah’s. One of our pastimes in Persia was gardening, but the dryness of the climate and the great heat of summer render one’s previous experience in England nearly useless. On getting into a new house, the garden is usually found in a very neglected state. It consists of a number of beds, which are sunk to a greater or less depth in the bricked courtyard.