THE CLUE OF THE BLUE-FACED BOOBIES
SIR,—Owing to my absence abroad I have only just seen your issue of January 10, in which your con- tributor Strix comments on Tim Slessor's book First Overland. As the author's 'scientific companion' I cannot let Strix get away with his. contention that the corrugations on Persian roads are caused by animals. In .the scientific circles in which I move it is well known that the only creature capable of causing this phenomenon is the Fatheaded Sheep (ovis strix), which has of course never been known to visit Persia.
Leaving aside matters of soil mechanics, a few points spring to mind : (i) Corrugations persist even where the road traverses great tracts of the Dash-i-Lut and Baluchistan much too arid to support domestic animals.
(ii) The wavelength of the corrugations is considerably larger than the pace of a sheep or goat.
(iii) These animals prefer to move beside the road rather than on it, in order to forage as they go.
(iv) If driven along the road itself, they do not keep to orderly ranks; only thus could they cause even furrows across a road up to twenty feet wide.
Perhaps the picture of the owl should be replaced by an image of a Red-faced Booby.—Yours faith- fully,
A. C. BARRINGTON BROWN
la Park Street, Cambridge
[Strix writes: `A great many readers have written to point out that I was quite wrong. I am sure they are quite right.'—Editor, Spectator.]
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