In the immediate neighbourhood of Kharta were several birds we had not met elsewhere, notably Prince Henry's laughing thrush (_Trochalopterum henrici_), which is very much venerated as a sacred bird by the Tibetans, the Central Asian blackbird, almost indistinguishable from our blackbird except by its voice, the solitary thrush, Indian brown turtledove, and a meadow-bunting (_Emberiza godlewskii_), probably a migrant from the North. Several species of small gentians and two very fragrant onosmas were flowering in August, and in this place _Clematis orientalis_ attains its best growth, clambering over the trees and the houses of the natives; the flower of this clematis has a very wide range of colour from an apricot yellow to almost black. About the houses are often planted junipers and poplars, and it was about 10 miles from Kharta that we saw a poplar nearly 40 feet in girth, which we were informed was five hundred years old. A few miles to the south of Kharta is a valley filled with a dozen or so of small lakes or tarns, inhabited apparently only by tadpoles (_Rana pleskei_); no fish could be seen. Not far from here was discovered an interesting toad of a new species (_Cophophryne alticola_). Growing about the lakes were large beds of purple and yellow iris (_I. sibirica_, near); the steeper banks were blue with a very striking campanula (_Cyananthus pedunculatus_); growing out from among the dwarf rhododendrons in dry places were tall spikes of a claret-coloured meconopsis, now going to seed--some spikes had as many as twenty seed-pods; and in the moist places beside the lakes and streams was the tall yellow primula (_P. elongata_), growing to a height of over 30 inches.