On June 11, also, we were witnesses to what must be a common tragedy. A family of small Brahminy ducklings—the Ruddy Sheldrake of Europe—were making their noisy way down from some nesting site on the steppe to the headwaters of the Arun—and safety. The parent birds may have taken fright at our camp, through which the ducklings scuttled fearlessly. The loathsome Ravens, gathered, as always, for carrion or camp refuse, swooped down and attacked the hapless family, bolting a whole duckling at each mouthful. Surely a gun would have done no harm here. Norton made the interesting discovery that the Meadow Bunting (_Emberiza cia godlewskii_) breeds in the Kama Valley, thus extending its breeding range far to the South. It may, indeed, be expected that several species now believed to breed only in Siberia may in fact be found nesting on the Northern slopes of the Himalaya, and even in other highland regions of Tibet. For here altitude comes to the assistance of latitude to produce an arctic type of climate, flora, and fauna; though it must be admitted that the aridity of Tibet must produce very different climatic conditions to those obtaining in the far North. In Gnari Khorsum, 400 miles West of Everest, I had obtained specimens, with young in down, of the Large Eastern Sand Plover (_Cirripedesmus mongolicus atrifrons_), which previously was only known as a breeding species from much farther North; and again, the day we left Tibet, at 17,000 feet, on the Serpo La, I found another pair of these Dotterel, from their behaviour obviously nesting, so to speak, at the very gates of India, for 10 miles further on we had left everything Tibetan behind us—landscape, flowers, birds, beasts, and insects were all different. Nowhere else in the world can there be a sharper natural division than between the Tibetan Highlands and the true Himalayan Zone. The physical and climatic conditions prevailing in this part of Tibet produces an environment hostile to reptilian and amphibian life. The single Toad obtained last year was quite new to science, and Norton’s capture of a second specimen is a great piece of luck. Miss Joan B. Procter, F.Z.S., of the Natural History Museum, has described and named it (_Cophophryne alticola_). It is remarkable by having the toes fully webbed. She also writes that the Toad, together with the Frog (_Nanorana pleskei_) and the Lizard (_Phrynocephalus theobaldi_), are all devoid of external ears, the tympanum itself being absent in the Toad. This unusual modification is attributed to the effect of altitude, but it has also been suggested that the absence of ears is due to inherited atrophy following generations of frost-bite—an interesting subject for the followers of Weissman! The fish, rejoicing in the name of _Schizopygopsis stoliczkæ_, is stated by Mr. Norman never to have been previously obtained from such an altitude.