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clviii 
whether from the north or from the south, the poorer animal 
life becomes. The effect of penetration from the north and 
south is less and less evident as the conditions of life become 
more and more unfavourable. The gazelles and antelopes of 
the Northern Sahara are species distributed eastward into the 
Nile country, or closely allied to such. The Bubalis seems to 
have disappeared from the Algerian High Plateaux and desert, 
the Dorcas gazelle, however, is still encountered at the foot 
of the Atlas, Loder’s gazelle is confined to the sandy desert, 
and so are the Addax and Mohr. In the bare southern range of 
the Aurés the Barbary sheep is found, a species also occurring 
in the rocky hills of the desert in many places, its most northern 
habitat bemg the ridge of rocks running east and west from 
Kl Kantara, to which mountains a third gazelle, Gazella cuvieri, 
seems to be restricted. The jackal and hyaena the desert 
shares with the rest of Algeria, while the fennec is only found 
in the sandy desert, all three Carnivora extending east into 
the Nile country and beyond. To all these large animals 
there is an “If” attached; if they have not already been 
exterminated in most localities where they formerly abounded, 
they have become rare, and will not long survive in the neigh- 
bourhood of the settlements, with the exception probably 
of the jackal. This is an inevitable fate, I fear, in a country 
hike Algeria. If a species has become rare and therefore 
unfamiliar, the first impulse of the human being who sees a 
specimen strange to him is to kill it. That is so even in Great 
Britain, where the love of nature is more deeply imbued in 
the population than anywhere else. The Arab does not kill 
for the love of killing, while on the other hand he is the most 
terrible pot-hunter, sparing neither young nor old in and out 
of season. The history of the ostrich in Algeria is an example 
in point. Though a bird, the ostrich lives the live of a ruminant 
mammal, and formerly occurred all through the Hauts Plateaux 
as far south as Ouargla. As late as the middle of the last 
century it was still abundant in the high stony desert south of 
Laghouat, where Tristram saw it in 1859. Though a prize 
coveted by the Arab hunter, the ostrich had held its own during 
all the centuries; but when the light of civilisation was brought 
to the desert in the shape of a conquering army, the drawbacks 
of civilisation also were imported and the first victims were the 
