, divided from each other by barren ridges, and is generally
deficient in the great fertilizer of all things--water. There is
scarcely an indigenous tree in the whole country, and generally very few
cultivated ones, except about Cabul, although they have poplars and
willows well suited to the climate. It has been subjected to so much
misrule that the natives have become indifferent to its improvement, (if
they ever felt alive to any such interest.) The Zoology is very poor,
quite at zero. There is a species of Ibex, an _Ovis_, and a _Capra_,
which from the frequency of their heads and horns about sacred places and
gateways of towns, must be common; but I have never seen more than a
portion of one fresh specimen of the sheep. Furs are brought from the
Hindoo-koosh, but are all too mutilated to be of any use, except to a
Zoologist with antiquarian eyes: one Jerboa. Hares are rather common in
some parts, and about here there is a Lagomys. Of birds there are but
few, but as the vegetation is chiefly vernal, these creatures may perhaps
be abundant. The game birds are quail, three species of partridge, a
huge Ptarmigan? Pterocles of Loodianah. The fauna is richest in Saurian
reptiles, and of these one might make a very good collection. I have
only seen two snakes, and both are I believe lost."

* * * * *

_Mirzapore_: _April 26th_, 1841.

"Request --- to refrain from abusing compound microscopes. Why should
not compound and simple microscopes each have their merits? Valentine,
who is a great authority, and an unrivalled dissector, says, the simple
lens must be suspended. I only wish I could dissect with a compound
microscope: what things might not one get access to. The simple lens is
quite useless with opaque objects; it only does for transmitted light.
Now dissections of opaque objects have been too much neglected. How odd
it is that all improvements are ridiculed at first.

"I enclose a bit of Sphagnam, a curious moss, with curious incomplete
spiral cells in the leaves. I dare say it will bear preservation in
Canada balsam. I have received a new microscope, a queer-looking thing,
very portable; one object glass of a quarter inch focus, by Ross; two eye-
pieces magnifying linearly 200 to 300 times. I have put it up, but I am
not well enough to decide on its merits. Now that I have arranged all my
things, I am literally frightened at the work I have to do.

"I am quite