THE ALGERIAN SAHARA. 25 
awful. The mayor did me the honour to write “ my descrip- 
tion.” From him I obtained the gratifying information that 
my hair was chestnut, my nose regular, my beard fair, 
my chin short, my eyes brown, and my complexion red!! 
The next day I left early for Mustapha to explore the lanes 
there. This beautiful suburb is the Richmond of Algiers, 
and the favoured resort of the best families. My first shot 
was at a female Black-headed Warbler. Instead of slate 
colour as in the cock, the back was brown, and the head no 
darker than a Lesser Whitethroat’s. Males of this species 
would appear to preponderate. After crossing several 
fields, and losing a specimen of Chlorospiza aurantitventris, 
the interesting Algerian representative of our Greenfinch,* 
from which it can scarcely be said to be distinct, I came to 
a wooded valley, where I had a couple of shots at an 
Ichneuman. I missed him, and never had a chance of 
getting another. Here I fell in with a Serin (Serinus 
hortulorum), singing merrily even then, at a period when 
winter had hushed for a time the notes of most of its 
congeners. One of the rarer British birds, it may be dis- 
tinguished ata glance from the hen Siskin, the only one 
on the list with which it could be confounded, by its thicker 
beak. Trying to scramble up some sandrocks I disturbed 
a dozing Barn Owl, which, being brought to bag, proved a 
very spotted specimen, with the bars of the tail more defined 
than in English examples. The next bird was a Cirl 
Bunting (Emberiza cirlus), not an uncommon species in 
Algeria. Then leaving the valley I gradually worked my 
way home by the sea shore, and the only bird I procured 
was the White Wagtail (J7otacilla alba), but the blue bay 
beneath me, and the transcendent scene, made up for the 
small bag, and I returned well satisfied with my walk. 
© In the summer of 1871, I saw an Algerian Greenfinch in the 
Zoological Gardens, supposed to be eight years old. 
