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THE ZOOLOGIST 



No. 877.— July 15th, 1914. 



THE EGYPTIAN DESERT AND ITS BIRDS. 

 By Robert Gurney. 



The ordinary traveller in Upper Egypt has few opportunities 

 of making acquaintance with the desert which fringes the culti- 

 vated strip of land along the Nile, and still less of seeing the 

 true Libyan Desert beyond. An excursion to Sakkara from 

 Gizeh will show him something of the former, but only of its 

 less pleasing features. It is only from Dahchour southwards 

 that the fringing desert can be seen at its best. This fringe 

 yaries in width from a few hundred yards to two or three miles, 

 and for the most part consists of stretches of absolutely barren, 

 stony, or sandy ground, as at Abydos ; but in other places there 

 are long sand-dunes covered with tamarisk and coarse wiry 

 grass, with intervening flats, either covered with grass or quite 

 bare sand. 



The fringing desert merges into cultivated land, for the 

 Fellah is always ready to sow his lupine crops so near the limit 

 of the ^inundation that there is usually a debatable ground 

 where stunted lupines struggle for bare existence against the 

 parched sand, and only the pretty little blue Iris thrives. 



The Libyan Desert, on the other hand, lying as it does at a 

 higher level, is sharply marked off from the valley of the Nile 

 either by rising abruptly in great limestone cliffs, or in rolling 

 sandy hills, as at Dahchour. Once on the true desert, the sight 

 of a green thing is a rare treat to the eye ; only here and there 

 in a hollow one may come across a patch of plants with succulent 



Znol. 4th ser. vol. XVIII.. July, 1914. V 



