“'Notes in Mesopotamia and Persia,' with lantern slides, by Mr A.O. Rowden (Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force).”

“The closing meeting of the Winter Session of the Royal Albert Memorial College Field Club and Natural History Society, Exeter, was held at the College, when Mr A.O. Rowden gave an interesting lecture, entitled, 'Notes in Mesopotamia and Persia,' illustrated by a large number of lantern slides made from photographs taken by the lecturer when serving in Asia during the war. Many of the slides depicted subjects of natural history -- river life, approach of a sandstorm, features of the plains of Mesopotamia and of the mountains of Western Persia -- while others depicted towns and villages and their inhabitants. One very interesting slide showed a huge flock of sand-grouse, numbering many thousands of birds, rising from mud flats, and looking like a great cloud against the background of sky. Mr Rowden laid stress upon the fact that the plains of Mesopotamia are not deserts in the true sense, but mud flats baked hard for eight or nine months of the year by the blazing sun and which soon after the first rains of the short winter season take on a mantle of vegetation, and are soon covered with masses of glorious flowers, showing how fertile the land would be if it could be sufficiently irrigated. Among these thousands of flowers the lecturer recognised many of our own wild plants, especially numbers of Compositae, and others to be found in our gardens. Two slides illustrated this point -- the former showing a barren waste, and the second the same area covered with masses of White Arabis. The principal trees are date and other palms, which grow in groups near the rivers. Near these, also, the only source of water, are the villages and fields of the settled Arabs, who practise a very primitive method of irrigation in order to secure their small crops of grain. There was also a series of interesting slides from photos taken among the ruins of ancient Babylon, showing the foundations of the famous hanging gardens, and some very strange emblematical beasts carved on the walls of various buildings. Mr Rowden was accorded a hearty vote of thanks for his interesting and instructive lecture, and for exhibiting such a fine series of photographs of the life and natural features of the land to which his war service took him.”