THE ALGERIAN SAHARA, 29 
here. Monsieur Jeannot, ornithologist, Hotel du Mazagram, 
showed mea pair killed with ball in the plain of Metidja. 
About April he told me some of the cattle generally die, 
and when the hot weather has made them partly putrid, a 
score or more of these Vultures will come from the moun- 
tains to feed on them, and in this way they are occasionally 
obtained. I did not get one then, but I bought a ragged 
skin (nearly adult) of a Zouave at Laghouat, which has 
since been made presentable by Mr. Burton, of Wardour 
Street. 
At a wood outside the village, as I was sitting on a 
little bridge, I saw an old Jackal quietly coming up the 
ditch at a slow swing trot. I watched him with a binocular- 
glass until he was within twenty-five yards, when probably 
scenting me, he leapt into the wood. 
On the 26th I returned to Algiers, and on the Ist of 
March I made my start for the Great Desert, having laid 
in a good stock of things for the journey, including a 
sovereign’s worth of alcohol for preserving reptiles. By 
train to Blida, and by “diligence” to Medea along a first- 
rate French road, is the route, passing through the famed 
gorge of the Chiffa. Here I stopped at the “ Ruisseau des 
Singes” audberge, where Canon Tristram tried in vain to 
obtain accommodation, and saw exactly the same species 
of birds as he saw, (“The Great Sahara,” p. 33) including 
the Blue Thrush (Petrocossyphus cyaneus). 1 did not obtain 
a specimen of it, for I had no opportunity of using a gun, 
but I bought a female in winter plumage at Algiers. I 
never saw it again in my Algerian travels, nor did I ever 
come across the Rock Thrush (Monticola saxatilis). 
There are a good many Monkeys on the beetling sides 
of this verdant, rocky, pass. Two at the “auberge” ap- 
peared to be the same sort as I saw at Gibraltar. The 
Barbary Ape I believe they are called. 
The Medea road passes through a line of forest country. 
