ce 
hall 
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French family which occupied it made us very comfortable. 
It les in a defile of a range of hills, which offer excellent 
collecting grounds. It was here that we made for the first 
time the acquaintance of Anthocharis pechi in the field, a species 
which used to be very rare in collections until quite lately. 
Unfortunately the bordj has been given up since the railway 
down to Djelfa has been completed, and there is now no 
accommodation anywhere near the place. A small hotel for 
naturalists ought to be attached to the railway station at 
Guelt-es-Stel. 
The most western place on the High Plateaux visited by me 
is Ain Sefra in the Southern Atlas of Oran, not far from the 
Moroccan frontier. It is an out-of-the-way place which is 
quite outside the beat of the sight-seeing tourists and lies 
between two high mountains, which attain over 6000 and 
7000 ft. An immense sand dune comes up from the Sahara, 
which explains the occurrence of a number of desert species 
in this locality. When we were there in 1913, we were fairly 
lucky with collecting, while Monsieur Faroult, who stayed at 
Ain Sefra a whole summer collecting for me, or trying to, got 
very little in consequence of the effects of drought and the 
ravages of locusts, two plagues which destroyed insect life 
for the time being. The province of Oran inclusive of the Tell 
is altogether less favoured with rain than Central and Eastern 
Algeria; even the districts near the coast with very fertile 
soil, like the plain of the River Chélif, cannot be depended on 
to give a fair harvest every year. In passing I will refer to a 
curious fact which may be only a coincidence or may have 
deeper significance. The Tell of Oran has less woods than 
Central and Eastern Algeria, and the open country, which 
could bear numerous trees, as it does further east, is practically 
bare of them. The inhabitants of the Oranese Tell are chiefly 
Spaniards, and the Spanish peasant has an aversion to trees. 
The absence of shade has certainly a good deal to do with the 
dryness of the soil and is possibly one of the reasons why Oran 
suffers so often from drought. If that is so, giving way to a 
subconscious aversion would here find its immediate punish- 
ment by the destruction of the crops by drought. I leave this 
point to the psycho-analyst to work out. 
