135 



AN ALGERIAN HOLIDAY. 



By a. E. Gibbs, F.E.S. 



(Plates V. & VI.)- 



In May, 1910, I went with my family to Vernet-les-Bains, 

 in the Eastern Pyrenees, in search of butterflies. The weather 

 proved to be wet, windy, and cold, and although we had four 

 nets at work, the result at the end of the first fortnight was so 

 poor, and the outlook so unpromising, that I resolved to seek 

 pastures new. If the sunshine would not come to me, I must go 

 and seek the sunshine. From the hill-tops around Vernet it is 

 possible to see the Mediterranean, and I remembered that on the 

 further side of that sea was the land of Barbary. Surely there 

 sunshine would be found, so I resolved to go and try my fortunes 

 in the land of mosques and minarets. Leaving my family in the 

 comfortable quarters of the Hotel Mercador, at Vernet, I sailed 

 from Port Vendres and arrived at Algiers on Monday, May 23rd. 

 The weather continuing unsettled, a couple of days were spent 

 exploring the sights of this bewildering city, where the Orient 

 seems to meet the Occident, the North the South. Mingled with 

 plants and trees familiar to our English eyes one finds vegeta- 

 tion of a semi-tropical character. The squares are shaded by 

 palms ; avenues of eucalyptus trees are planted along the roads ; 

 in the gardens one gets glimpses of orange trees with their golden 

 burden, or of lemons heavy with fruit. The only butterflies I 

 saw in Algiers were some " whites," probably Pieris rapa, and 

 a single specimen of Gonepteryx deopatra, flying in the Arab 

 cemetery. 



The physical features of Algeria present some points of 

 interest. The country may be divided into three regions. First, 

 we have what is known as the Tell, the narrow strip of cultivated 

 land lying between the mountains and the sea. It is some hun- 

 dreds of miles in length, and varies in width from about thirty 

 to about one hundred miles. It is not, however, one long 

 continuous plain, but is broken up by the hills into various 

 small parts. The Tell is one of the most fertile regions in the 

 north temperate zone, its rich black deep soil yielding abounding 

 crops of grain. Oranges, lemons, figs, pomegranates, olives, and 

 other fruits flourish. Then we have the second region formed 

 by the elevated land behind the Tell, and spoken of collectively 

 as the Atlas. In the north we have the range known as the 

 Little Atlas. Although the general direction of the mountains is 

 east and west, the Atlas does not form one long continuous range, 

 as we find in the Pyrenees for instance, but it is split up into a 

 number of small ranges or spurs, in complex folds, sometimes 

 forming groups of high mountains, and sometimes rugged hills 



^- Plate VI. will appear in the ' Entomologist' for May. 



