Once upon a time the river had washed the foot of Al-Ajik ridge. But now a long stretch of dead ground intervenes before water is reached. Local legend says a lady lived here who played Hero to a Leander on the opposite bank. More obviously, Al-Ajik castle guarded Samarra from the north. The castle is on steep crags, with vast nullas in front. In the old days it should have been impregnable. Underneath are very large vaults, filled with rubbish. As our exploring party came up a pair of hawks left their eyrie, and circled round us, screaming their indignation. When the division first reached Al-Ajik, Thornhill said, a pair of Egyptian vultures (Pharaoh's Chickens) were nesting here. These had gone. They are rare birds in Mesopotamia, and I never saw them north of Sheikh Saad. Thornhill had seen Brahminy Duck in a nulla, so we searched till we found a tunnel. Bracken leading, we got in some hundred yards, stooping and striking matches, till we came on a heap of bones. Thornhill surmised a hyena, so we returned, as no one wished to fight even that, unarmed and in a diameter of less than five feet. There must be many tunnels leading into the heart of Al-Ajik fortress; and here, as everywhere on the plateau, were remains of the most complicated irrigation system the ancient world knew. The castle, as it stands, has been largely built out of the ruined portions on its northern face. Life was scant at Samarra, as poor as it had been abundant at Sannaiyat. The crested larks were of a new species. Owls nested in the old wells; and most units were presently owning their owlets or kestrels or speckled kingfishers, miserable-looking birds. Sandgrouse were few, but commoner towards the central plateau, where were water-holes. Gazelles were often seen by pickets, and used to break across the railway-line, to water at the river. One regiment took a Lewis-gun after them, and other folk chased them in motor-cars. The British army, as ever, busied itself, as opportunity came, in its self-appointed task of simplifying the country's fauna that the naturalist's work might be easier. Wherefore the gazelles left our precincts, but still haunted the channels of the Dujail, by Beled and Istabulat. For most of the year the water-holes sufficed them, the green, velvet dips, with zizyph-bushes fringing each hollow, which redeem the desert. Hedgehog quills and skins were common, as everywhere in Mesopotamia. A vast hedgehog led C Company of the Leicestershires nightly to their picket-stations. On its first appearance a man ran to bayonet it, but the officer did not see the necessity of this, and stopped him. So the urchin lived, and ever after paced gravely before its friends. Then we had the usual birds. Storks nested in the town; there were rollers and kingfishers, and a hawk or two. But the desert, with its starved crop of dwarf thorns, had no place for bird or animal. Men who saw Samarra after my time raved of its winter glory, its