In the way of bird and animal life there are larks, doves, pigeons, hawks, turkeys, cuckoos, and tortoises. The latter animals caused our sentries many anxious moments. I shouldn't care to calculate how many tortoises were "halted," nor how many were shot at. They were big fellows as tortoises go, and when a chap got a squint of one mooching along the sky-line in the moonlight, it was all the odds to a tin-tack he let go at it. In the insect line we could count quite a tidy little collection. We had flies by the hundred billion. They were everywhere, from the heaps of dead to the cook's pots. Put jam on a biscuit and it was always a sprint to your mouth between you and the flies, the event usually ending in a dead heat. There were other insects not quite so plentiful as the flies, but even fonder of our company—at least, they stuck close to us; they're not usually named before ladies, except in the pulpit. We had snakes, scorpions, centipedes, and big hairy tarantula spiders; and when they elected to drop into the trenches things got fairly lively. We liked them just about as much as they liked us. A state of war existed between us: we took no prisoners. ——AND (a very big "and") _there is gold on the Gallipoli Peninsula_. There is. It's there—for I myself panned off the dirt and found the colour! I know the spot, and some day, perhaps, I'll have a try for the big seam. I have a fairly good idea—— But that's another tale. There are other things in our trenches that we don't care overmuch to have as company. Maggots—maggots crawling in battalions about a chap's feet and dropping from the sides of the trench down his neck. Maggots from the dead! You can't sit down hardly without flattening a dozen or two out. It's bad for one's uniform. Something will have to be done, or we'll all be down with disease. It's a good job we were all inoculated against enteric, anyway. The smell is worse than a glue factory. We have dead Turks right on our very parapets. Only this morning a bullet pitched into one lying close handy, and the putrid matter (of the consistency of porridge) was "spattered" right over us. They say you can get used to anything. Well, maybe so. But it's hard to get used to that. No news yet, and no way of sending any. _Later._—First part of a mail arrived at last. Two letters for me. Am going to try to get letters sent off; they will be strictly censored, of course. The sergeant of my section killed to-day—a really nice fellow and a general favourite. I'll soon have no chums left at all. Enemy is now using explosive bullets. I have seen their effects.