MOUSSIEB'8 BEDSTABT. 85 



" glehce adstricta^^ as this. The Lamniergeyer and the Vulture are at 

 home, but their presence recalls visions of the Pyrenees or the Balkan. 

 Every Warbler on our lists may be found in those thickets, bnt 

 many of them were born and educated in Europe, and like the 

 Roman of old, the Spaniard of yesterday, and the Frenchman of 

 to-day, they may return to their northern resorts. The Bustard and 

 the Sand Grouse abound in these arid plains, but they are familiar 

 forms to the Arab invaders of the East. If the Ostrich ventures to 

 his northernmost limits, he is little better than an invader, like his 

 brother Touareg, and is chased as such with as little compunction." 



''But Moussier is an indisputable 'indigene.' While one race of 

 man after another has rushed like a flood over North Africa, and 

 left the faint traces of each invasion in a few stranded ruins on the 

 shores, or in the tide-marks of some wrecks of humanity on the 

 mountain sides; long before the first Phoenician galley had entered 

 the Bay of Tunis, and treated with the Numidian king; before either 

 Roman, Vandal, or Saracen had disturbed his retreat, Moussier was 

 here, never disturbed by a restless taste for emigration, nor an 

 appetite for the slopes of the Alps or Apennines. I love to watch 

 him as a gentle and genuine Numidian, the one local and peculiar 

 bird: Mauritania, now the province of Algeria, he avoids. The only 

 time I ever found him beyond the frontier of Constantine was once 

 in the forest of Boghar, and there he was so rare, that of several 

 French local naturalists none could tell me what it was. Towards 

 the east he gradually approaches the shore, not crossing the water- 

 shed in Constantine, but at Tunis resorting commonly to the ruins 

 of Utica, near the coast, and thence extending itself as far as the 

 oases of Djereed, Nefta, and Souf, while in all the more southern oases 

 of the M'zab and Waregla he abounds." 



"Still I hardly expected him at Weled Zeid, and not having up 

 to this time met with the nest, I kept careful watch, feeling sure 

 from the actions of the bird that his mate was not far distant. 

 Perhaps it is owing to her modest and inconspicuous plumage that 

 the female is but rarely observed, so rarely, that I am sure we noted 

 at least a dozen males for every hen bird we saw. With her brown 

 back and russet red breast, she is detected with difficulty in the 

 bushes, and, unlike her consort, rarely exhibits herself on the top of 

 a bush or edge of a stone, remaining generally among the roots of 

 the thickets. Though in distribution of plumage Moussier's Warbler 

 shows a strong affinity to the Redstarts, yet in its habits and manner 

 of perching it is a true Furzechat, and I fully agree with Mr. 

 Salvin's opinion (' Ibis,' i., 307,) that it is more of a Chat than a 

 Redstart." 



