150 Rev. H. B. Tristi-am on the 



desert chieftain. Strangely has Algeria changed, when, but 

 twelve years since that epoch, a solitary naturalist can in secu- 

 rity prepare for a three days' lonely bivouac in the frontier forest. 

 A well-marked track led me into the forest, not before I had 

 had sufficient daylight to enjoy the vast panorama of the plain 

 of the Metidjah stretched beneath, with the dark green orange 

 groves of Blidah framing the white city in the distance, and the 

 jagged line of the Atlas beyond, with a patch of thick mist over- 

 banging a fissure in the mountain line, the famed gorge of the 

 ChifFa. A Hysena struck across my path as I entered the 

 thickets, and soon after a pretty little Ichneumon kept running 

 on almost fearlessly before me. Sitting across my pack-saddle, 

 I had just missed a snap shot at a rabbit, when a strange scream 

 from a matted lentisk bush arrested me — " Tschagra, Tschagra, 

 chugra, chrug ! " most inharmoniously repeated. I dismounted, 

 approached, but could not see the hidden vocalist, though I 

 struck the bush several times. At length a stone dislodged 

 him, and I brought him down ere he had reached the next 

 clump. It was a fine male specimen of Telephonus cucullatus, 

 or Tschagra, aptly so named, and was the first I had ever seen. 

 He is a beautiful bird in flight ; his rich chestnut wings prettily 

 contrasting with his long expanded fan-like tail of jet black 

 with a broad white bar at its extremity. In his habits he differs 

 much from other Shrikes, never showing himself, as they do, 

 on the extremity of a branch, or in an exposed tree, but always 

 concealed in the thickest recesses. " Heard, not seen,'' is his 

 motto. I looked in vain for the nest, which was probably in 

 the neighbourhood, as I saw another bird gliding through an 

 adjoining thicket. A few days afterwards on my return I ob- 

 tained a nest, the only one I ever took, placed in the centre of 

 an arbutus bush, large and coarsely constructed of twigs with a 

 thick lining of wool and hair, and containing four eggs. These 

 were slightly larger than those of Lanius excubitor, of a white 

 ground, very thickly covered over the whole surface with brown 

 spots, and a few russet-red blotches, somewhat intermediate in 

 character between those of the Shrike and the Lark. But for 

 the closeness of the spots and their reddish hue they might easily 

 pass for the eggs of Certhilauda desertovum in my collection. The 



