62 XOVITATES ZOOLOGICAE XXII. I!)15. 



bnshes of Limoniastrum guyonianum. The next morniug was one of those 

 refreshing, thongh perfect])- dry aud qniet mornings one has in the .Sahara in 

 the winter, np to the beginning of May. The thermometer, at half-past five 

 in the morning, showed only 6°C. On the 12th we reached El-Alia, a promising 

 place, belonging to a wealthy marabu. Riding at the head of onr caravan, 

 we lost sight of it in a more or less slippery feebcha. We could distinctly see 

 the jialms of El-Alia in the distance, as they were visible between some rich 

 yellow sand-dunes. We therefore troubled little about the way, aud reached the 

 place safely enough, but we crossed the dunes where they were widest, instead of 

 where the belt was narrow, as we had done in 1912. Thus the crossing of the high 

 dunes, where the sand was often so loose that the mules could only get through 

 with great difficulty, took ns nearly an hour. Here, as elsewhere, one did not 

 realise the extent of the dunes, which appear as a yellow line on the horizon, until 

 one is right among them. 



At El-Alia the water of some of the wells is beautiful ; the palms grow mostly 

 in deep holes, as in El-Oued (see A'or. Zool. xviii. p. 461, plates xxii, xxiii.), without 

 being artificially watered ; and the population — mostly dark-coloured, probably of 

 Berber origin and not Arab — is very hard-working. One sees little of them ; they 

 are generally at work, digging out holes, planting trees, or carrying sand out of the 

 gardens, and seem to have no time to talk and stare at strangers. The marabu 

 and his son (who had to do the honours of the place until his father returned) 

 invited us to dinner and tea, and would not fake a refusal. It was difficult to get 

 away in time to catch a few lepidoptera, and we did not get any larger species. 

 Here we began again to see the large Nenroptera of the family Myrmeleonides, 

 among which we had discovered so many new species two years before {Nov. Zool. 

 XX. p. 446). We saw two pairs of Oenanthe leucopyga aegra, vrfiich we had not 

 seen here before. 



On the 13th we reached the sandy plain of El-Arich, which I described, 

 JSov. Zool. XX. p. 26, as an El-Dorado for ornithologists. It is no doubt a very 

 interesting place, but we were this time a little disappointed. The vegetation 

 appeared to be less rich than two years ago, and hundreds of camels were feeding 

 on it. We could not come across Caprimulgus aegyptitis at all, Ammomane.f 

 phoeiiicufus arenicolor was hardly seen near the place where we camped — -we were 

 unable to find our old camping-ground — Alaemon alaudipes was very rare, 

 Scotocerca did not interest ns any more, Galerida theklae deichleri, to our amaze- 

 ment, already had young. We were, however, not disapjiointed with Si/ln'a 

 nana fleserti. We took four nests with eggs, but one was, unfortunately, too hard 

 set for blowing; it was, however, some time before we accidentally, close to the 

 camp, came across the first nest. Formerly we had found them in bushes of 

 Traganum, Calligonum, and Ephedra. Onr search among these was this time in 

 vain, probably because these plants had suffered from drought and camels, and all 

 nests seemed to stand in the thick bunches of " Drin," Aristida pungens, a grass 

 characteristic of the desert sand. Unfortunately the weather was dull — no sun, 

 and windy ; it had been our intention to stay two days in the plain of El-Arich, 

 but having succeeded in finding the eggs of the Si/kia, and the weather being bad 

 for insects, we went on to the desolate hammada, in which is situated the well 

 Hassi-Sidi-Mahmud, with very brackish water. Of the rare and beautiful lizard 

 Agama tournevillei, on account of the absence of sun, only a single specimen 

 was seen. 



