on a Natjiralist’s Ramble in Algeria. 75


places conies bubbling out of the earth at a temperature of

203° Fah ; quite hot enough to boil eggs or vegetables.


Here, in the fields close to the hotel, were numbers of

Goldfinches, Dusky Bulbuls, Vultures, Buzzards, Barbary

Partridges, and other birds. While I was there a civet cat was

caught in a trap and put in a cage to be taken to Germany. the

poor thing looked very unhappy and would eat nothing. They

are very destructive to fowls. Another day a lynx and a jackal

were brought in by a hunter. When walking thiough the fields

I often came across the diggings of wild boars; the hotel

people had a tame wild pig which had been caught young close

to the house. Tortoises were common.


Our last stopping place in North Africa was Tunis, where

I noticed very few birds, it being much more of a town than the

other places we had visited. The Flamingo was conspicuous by its

absence, although some guide books will tell you otherwise. I

was told by some people there that to see them we would have to

travel about 100 miles inland. I visited the naturalist in the

Rue Al-Djazira, No. 19, and bought some skins.


At the Carthage Museum I saw a number of Ostrich eggs

dug up intact from the ruins of ancient Carthage ; some had a

network pattern on them, others were quite plain, with a large

hole in the end surrounded by six smaller ones.


As everyone knows, North Africa is in the Palsearctic

region, so that the common birds one sees every day are just like

our British species, aud in my list I have only a few that are not

known in the British Isles.


Of the books published on the birds I could only get a

few, they are as follows:—Gurney’s Rambles of a Naturalist,

Dixon on Algerian Birds , Canon Tristram’s Great Sahara , and

some articles in the Ibis, and German Journal of Ornithology.

Before I left home I enquired about bringing a gun, but was told

so many stories about the trouble I should have in getting it

through, that I decided not to take one, for which I was very

sorry afterwards, as I found the French had no objection to any

person bringing one fowling piece with their luggage, as long as

there are no cartridges; the licence costs about 30 francs in

Algeria.



