In Siwa there are very few domestic animals. None of the people keep camels, partly because they have no need for them, and partly owing to the presence of the “ghaffar” fly which inoculates camels and horses with a disease that shortens their life very considerably. For this reason one set of camels belonging to the F.D.A. remain permanently at Siwa in order to avoid spreading the disease among the camels on the coast. Almost every man in Siwa has a donkey, and some of the large landowners have thirty or forty. One meets them everywhere, in the streets trotting along under enormous loads, but carrying them apparently with the greatest ease. The Siwans rarely walk any distance, they always ride. The donkeys are stout little beasts and are better treated on the whole than in Egypt. They are imported by the Gawazi Arabs from Upper Egypt and the Fayum, via Farafra, the oasis of “Bubbling Springs,” which lies south-east of Siwa, but they breed freely in Siwa, and their diet of dry dates seems to suit them well. Donkeys are also used as a threshing machine. When the barley is ripe it is cut and collected and spread out in a circle on a smooth, hard piece of ground. Ten or fifteen donkeys are harnessed abreast, in line, and driven round and round over the barley; when they wheel the innermost donkey moves very slowly, and the outer ones trot fast. In this way the corn is crushed out of the husks. Afterwards it is winnowed by the simple process of throwing it up into the air so that the straw blows away and leaves only grain. There are about a hundred cows in Siwa; they are small animals, about the size of a Jersey, but they give very good milk. At certain times one sees quite a number of birds at Siwa, but they are mostly migratory. I have noticed crane, duck, flamingo and geese on the salt lakes; hawks, crows, ravens and owls among the cliffs; doves, pigeon, hoopoes, wagtails and several varieties of small singing birds in the gardens. Some of them nest in the oasis, and I collected about a dozen different kinds of eggs, but unfortunately they all got broken. There is one bird which is, I believe, indigenous to Siwa, it is known by the natives as “Haj Mawla.” It is about the size of a thrush, black with white feathers in its tail, and a very pretty song somewhat similar to the note of a robin. Lately the Administration has installed lofts of carrier pigeons along the coast and at Siwa. On the coast they have been quite successful, but so far no pigeons have been trained to cross the desert. The hawks at Siwa are a serious menace to them, and quite a number have been killed. In former days the Libyan Desert produced ostriches. Browne, in 1792, mentions that he saw broken eggs and tracks of ostriches on his way to Siwa. But nowadays there are none. Many of the lions that were used in the arenas of Rome were brought from Libya, but these too are now extinct. “So some fierce lion on the Libyan plain,