We have never seen this animal in life, but we once saw the head of something of the _genus bos_ on the wall of the house of a Kurdish gentleman of Amadia. Its preservation was deplorable, but it had long fine horns, and its colour had been white originally, as is the case with wild cattle elsewhere, but is very rare with the domestic animal. We observed to our host that his ox had unusually fine horns, but he declared "that is no common ox, _Effendim_; it is one of the wild cattle of the mountains, of which there are very few in these days." We regret to add that seven years later the head had perished altogether, which is a distinct loss; still, there is other evidence that the animal is not entirely extinct as yet. Birds are not numerous, but what there are are mostly of the decorative order. The great golden eagle is fairly plentiful in the mountains, and the black one is seen at times. Vultures and kites are common enough; and Haji Laqlaq the stork comes in regularly from his pilgrimage to Mecca in the spring. Magpies are plentiful and are seen in flocks of twenty at a time, in numbers that preclude any superstition attaching to them. They are good scavengers; and the parts that appear as black in their English cousins are seen, on examination, to be of a dark metallic blue and green in these specimens, so that the total effect is really brilliant. The "blue jay" too, is really blue in this land; for he does not confine himself to a few blue feathers in his wings, as with us, but does equal honour to both our universities, by appearing with a Cambridge blue body and Oxford blue wings, and thus has a magnificent appearance. Even he is outdone by the kingfisher, who is a large specimen of his kind, and clothes himself entirely in deep metallic blue with a marvellous sheen. That at least is the livery of the fisher on the River Zab. Lower down on the Tigris, the blue is light in colour, though equally metallic in tone, and is set off by a pair of bright russet wings. The hoopoe comes in the summer and is, as ever, an attractive and gay neighbour, with his body of bright chestnut, and wings and crest of barred black and white. Nestorians call him "the bird of Solomon," and tell the familiar legend of his crown; but Armenians account for it in a different way. "Their fathers say" that the hoopoe was once a damsel, very pretty, but also very conceited, who would not veil her face as decency dictates, but kept the covering that should have concealed it cocked up on the top of her head, so that all the young men could see her. So she was turned into a hoopoe, and goes about for ever in the same flirty way as of old, with the veil still on the top of her head in the guise of a crest!