CHAPTER VIII 
EGYPT AND THE SUDAN 
January 1st—April 18th, 1909 
The land of the Pharaohs has much to recommend it; but though 
historically of surpassing interest, as a hunting ground for butterflies 
it holds an extremely low place. So far as our positive knowledge 
goes it would be manifestly unfair to accuse the long lines of despots 
who ruled at Memphis or Thebes of having caught all the butterflies, 
but it would not be so unreasonable to attribute their present 
scarcity to the ancestors of the present fellahin, who through all 
the dynasties so assiduously cultivated the valley of the Nile— 
for one soon learns that Egypt is the Nile, and that the Nile 
is Egypt. 
The Great Pyramid stands at the apex of the Delta, and from 
that point southwards, right away to the Sudan, there extends on 
either bank of the river—unbroken by any tributary—a strip of 
land, varying in width from a few yards to a few miles, blessed with 
a soil of almost unequalled fertility. Each of these strips is bounded 
on one side by the Nile, on the other by the barren Libyan and 
Arabian deserts respectively. Thus for all practical purposes Egypt 
may be said to approximate closely to Euclid’s definition of a line— 
length without breadth. All the available land has been cultivated 
for centuries, most of it for millennia, so that the indigenous flora of 
the Nile valley, save such hardy fragments of it as could adapt 
themselves to the artificial life of “ weeds of cultivation,” has long 
since disappeared, and what it may have been like no man knows. 
With this flora has departed a fauna, probably never very extensive, 
but doubtless very interesting. 
In spite of the Badawin, and their countless camels and goats— 
animals that find a sustenance where others would soon perish—the 
Desert has to a great extent held its own, and its flora and fauna 
retain much of their original character. The insect fauna of the 
