TCD MS 10516 folio 67 recto
[12th October 1916] the size of peas, others as large as marbles, with every intermediate gradation of growth and development from the smallest visible speck of yolk to the tense ruddy globe, swollen with foetal food and with membranes flushed with blood.
I had no idea that the procreating power of this tortoise was so profuse. I suppose it wanders from place to place along the river banks depositing in hollow after hollow a new clutch of eggs, for, if all the developing ova in the ovaries reach maturity, it must lay many hundreds of eggs in the season.
Fish The fish in the Euphrates, like the insects of the desert, congregate in vast multitudes. They are mainly of two species known locally as the Euphrates Salmon* and the Mudfish¤. As they feed