156 ALGEEIA 
flying about sandy banks, and was more than once seen to enter 
holes therein. 
The only beetles that I came across were two Blaps cognata , Sol., 
a female found dead and a male crawling on the sand. 
Biskra, lat. 34° 50' N"., altitude 400 ft. 
February 16th—March 8th. 
Disappointed in the chilliness of Alger, and the lateness of vegeta¬ 
tion and insect life, we determined to make without delay for the 
southernmost hotel in the land. The journey was cold, and at a 
station on the high central plateau of the Atlas range, which was 
passed in the night, we were told that the fresh fallen snow was 
a metre deep. This was, however, quickly forgotten as we passed 
through the gorge of El Kantara (The Bridge), and the opening view 
disclosed a grove of date-palms marking the oasis of the same name, 
and then for the first time we felt the fascination of the desert. 
Biskra, now the terminus of the railway, was once an important 
military outpost connected with civilization by a semaphore telegraph, 
the towers of which still stand upon prominent heights far above the 
railway. Set just where the main caravan route across the portion 
of the Sahara known as the Ziban emerges from the foothills of the 
Atlas on its way to Tuggurt and Wagla, and ultimately to Tim¬ 
buktu, it guards the gate of the desert, and the place is interesting 
in many ways. The old fort, with enceinte sufficiently extensive to 
contain all the white population, told of the troubled times not long 
ago (if indeed even now quite of the past), and reminded some of us 
of the mud fort of Peshawar, though entirely devoid of its picturesque¬ 
ness. The market is an important one, and here may be studied to 
advantage the man-child of the desert in his native dress, a costume 
that for grace and dignity is probably unequalled. I say “ man- 
child” advisedly, for the women are strictly secluded from the 
profane gaze of the tourist. Camels seem innumerable; inde¬ 
scribably fascinating in the middle distance as they slowly wend 
their swinging way across the desert plain, they are at close quarters 
indescribably hideous and provokingly supercilious. I had the good 
fortune to see a caravan from Timbuktu the morning after its 
arrival. Three days before the end of the three months 5 journey a 
foal, seemingly the first of the season, had been born, and, being 
unable to keep up with the caravan, had been strapped upon 
its mother’s back! This foal, longer as to its legs than any foal 
