36 NATURAL HISTORY ESSAYS 



The fennec constructs its own burrow, where it 

 spends the hours of daylight curled up, with its 

 bushy tail wrapped round it like a natural counter- 

 pane, though the large ears remain exposed. The 

 districts of the Sahara through which I travelled 

 were remarkable for their periodical streams 

 which, though containing water in the winter, are 

 at midsummer merely dried up ravines. It is 

 along the beds of such former watercourses or 

 in the depressions between the sand dunes that 

 the fennec passes in seeking its drinking place at 

 dusk, its great ears ever on the alert to warn it of 

 approaching danger ; while doubtless its acute 

 sense of hearing is of the greatest service, as in 

 the stillness of the desert it begins to search for 

 its nocturnal prey jerboas or lizards. 1 



Although Bruce's type specimen is believed to 

 have come from Biskra (and fennecs were some 

 years ago frequently offered for sale there), I did 

 not observe any of these tiny foxes in the Arab 

 market at that place. That it is still a common 

 African species, is however demonstrated by the 



i The utter and savage desolation of the wildernesses in which the 

 fennec lives would almost seem to forbid any animal, however small, 

 the means of subsistence. Even in the extreme Northern Sahara 

 (districts of El Kantara and El Outaia) I observed but few signs of 

 life. One or two little black-and-white birds (rock chats) at uncertain 

 intervals : occasional parties of insects hovering in shimmering clouds 

 above the burning sand : and high in the blazing sky birds of prey 

 ready to pounce on anything larger than a mouse, completed the 

 scanty picture of animal life. Vegetation was represented merely by 

 a coarse scrub of dwarf bushes, and the scenery consisted of frowning 

 rocks, yawning precipices, and stretches of shifting sand a vast and 

 awful silence reigning over all. 



