Rev. H. B. Tristram's Notes fro?7i Eastern Algeria. 365 



monotonous note. If ever Libya were in search of an ornitho- 

 logical emblem, Moussier's Redstart should be its emblazon. 

 There is no other bird so truly and strictly " glehce adstrida " as 

 this. The Lammergeyer and the Vulture are at home, but their 

 presence recalls visions of the Pyrenees or the Balkan. Every 

 warbler on our lists may be found in those thickets, but many 

 of them were born and educated in Europe, and like the Roman 

 of old, the Spaniard of yesterday, or the Frenchman of today, 

 they may return to their northern resorts. The Bustard and 

 the Sand Grouse abound in these arid plains, but they are fami- 

 liar forms to the Arab invaders from the East. If the Ostrich 

 ventures to his northernmost limits, he is little better than an 

 invader, like his brother Touareg, and is chased as such with as 

 little compunction. 



But Moussier is an indisputable ' indigene.' While one race 

 of man after another has rushed like a flood over North Africa, 

 and left the faint traces of each invasion in a few stranded ruins 

 on the shores, or in the tide-marks of some wrecks of humanity 

 on the mountain sides ; long before the first Phoenician galley 

 had entered the Bay of Tunis, and treated with the Numidian 

 king, before either Roman, Vandal, or Saracen had disturbed 

 bis retreats, ^loussier was here, never disturbed by a restless 

 taste for emigration, nor an appetite for the slopes of Alps or 

 Apennines. I love to watch him as a gentle and genuine Nu- 

 midian, the one local and peculiar bird. IMauritania (now the 

 province of Algeria) he avoids. The only time I ever found 

 him beyond the frontier of Constantino was once in the Forest 

 of Boghar, and there he was so rare, that of several French local 

 naturalists none could tell me what it was. Towards the east 

 he gradually approaches the shore, not crossing the watershed in 

 Constantino, but at Tunis resorting commonly to the ruins of 

 Utica near the coast, and thence extending himself as far as the 

 oases of the Djerecd, Nefta, and Souf, while in all the more 

 southern oases of the M'zab and Waregla he abounds. 



Still I hardly expected him at Weled Zeid, and not having, up 

 to this time, met with the nest, 1 kept careful watch, feeling 

 sure, from the actions of the bird, that his mate was not far 

 distant. Perhaps it is owing to her modest and inconspicuous 



