To the now comparatively teeming members of the Society who have experienced one of its African tours, it is hard to explain in a few words how India was so different and so very well worth while. For it was by no means a case of the mixture as before. But perhaps it would be better to try to convey the atmosphere in a tailpiece, and start with facts and figures.

The report by Dr Zoltan Kaszab of a sighting of Przewalski wild horses in Mongolia, published in Oryx, December 1966, has brought criticism of the identification. However, an expedition in the summer of 1967 sighted a mare with a yearling foal and found tracks of others. In this article Mr Ivor Montagu discusses the criticism of the 1966 sighting and Dr Kaszab's reply, and lists other sightings accepted by the Mongolian authorities.

In both North and South America rabies is carried by bats, especially the vampire bats in the warmer central countries. Every country in the two continents, with only three exceptions, and every state in the USA, with only two exceptions, has reported rabid bats. As rabies is fatal to both humans and domestic animals control measures are essential. The author, who was for many years in charge of vampire-bat control in Trinidad, where in the ten years up to 1935, 89 humans and thousands of cattle died of paralytic rabies, emphasises that bats are beneficial animals and that control must be aimed, not at indiscriminate destruction of bats, but to regulate the population levels, and that care must be taken not to involve other species.

1. The populations of the endemic avifauna of Seychelles have declined in numbers, some very seriously, during the last hundred years. Only those in danger of extinction are discussed here.

2. The magpie robin population is reduced to a score of birds; the population will soon be extinct unless drastic action is taken.

3. The population of the paradise flycatcher is reduced to about 30 birds; conservation must take the form of propaganda, especially since the population is in danger of being reduced still further by the economic development of La Digue.

Still relatively rich in the larger African mammals despite the destruction of recent years, Ethiopia is tackling wildlife conservation problems in earnest. In 1965 the Imperial Government set up a Wildlife Conservation Department, and appointed John Blower as Senior Game Warden and adviser on wildlife conservation. Several national parks are now scheduled, and it is hoped that the first, the Awash National Park, will soon be officially opened by the Emperor. This is in the very rich Awash Valley to the east of Addis Ababa, where a wide range of animals includes greater and lesser kudu, beisa oryx, gerenuk, klipspringer, leopard, lion, cheetah, a few Swayne's hartebeest, now on the verge of extinction, and many birds. Two other proposed national parks, in the Siinien Mountains and the Bale Mountains, will protect Ethiopia's four endemic mammals, the rare walia ibex, the Simien fox, gelada baboon and the mountain nyala. A map of Ethiopia is on pages 284–5

Elephant management in East African reserves and national parks has become one of the urgent conservation problems of today. In this study of the African savanna elephant, Dr Sikes shows that two diseases of the heart and arteries, found only in lowland elephants, were directly associated with the degeneration of the habitat when elephant numbers began to build up in the Tsavo National Park in Kenya and the Queen Elizabeth and Murchison Falls National Parks in Uganda. The two diseases thus appear to be natural factors tending to limit the elephant populations in these reserves, and she suggests four lessons to be drawn from this discovery by those concerned with elephant management in national parks.

The West Indian manatee Trichechus manatus manatus has declined rapidly in many parts of its range and appears on the IUCN's list of endangered species. But in British Honduras last summer the author found an abundance of manatees all along the coast. Moreover, predation is at a minimum: the people who formerly ate manatee meat now show little interest in it, and the alligator, its only other predator, has been persecuted almost to extinction.