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2 14 CYPRUS IN 1879. cchap! is an expanse of marsh and bulrushes, abounding withl snipe during the winter months. On 13th April l | walked over the greater portion of this locality with j my three spaniels, but the snipe had departed, and wef did not move a bird. On the right side of Morphu Bay to the east, by] Kormachiti, there are extensive sand-dunes, forming deep drifts, which extend for several miles inland at the foot of the hill-range that we had descended. These exhibit the prevailing wind (north). Many people upon observing sand-dunes attribute the most distant limit of the sand to the extreme violence of the wind ; but this is not the case. It is the steady prevalence of moderately strong winds that causes the extension of sand-drifts. The wind of to-day deposits! the sand at a certain distance from the shore. The wind to-morrow starts the accumulated sand from that depot to form a new deposit about equidistant and thus by slow degrees the dunes are formed by a succession of mounds, conveyed onwards by ani unchanging force ; but the maximum power of a gale; would be unable to carry thousands of tons of heavy sand to form a hill-range at the- extreme distance from the original base of the material. A t Hambantotte, in the southern district of Ceylon, there is an extraordinary example of this action, where during one monsoon a range of mounds is formed which might be termed hills ; when the monsoon changes, these by degrees disappear, and, according to the alteration in the wind, a range of hills is formed in an exactly opposite direction. I was glad to escape from Morphu ; the wind from the dry plain was hot, and brought clouds of dust. We were surrounded by throngs of people during the

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