CHAPTER XV. 
THE DUSKY CHAT 
(.Saxicola lencura). 
“ Whose house I have made the wilderness, and the barren land his dwellings.”—» 
Job xxxix. 6. 
When the traveller has been sailing for clays together, 
on the “ Ship of the Desert,” over the sandy waste, and 
imagines that all animated nature is dead, his eye will 
rest with intense pleasure on one of those little birds 
whose true home is indeed the wilderness : it is a Stone- 
chat, whose genus is so rich in different species, one of 
which is ever recurring in our German fatherland, though 
most members of the family inhabit the South. The 
further one penetrates the barren country the more 
common these birds become. In the desert itself one 
meets with nearly a dozen different species, especially 
during the winter season, when every third bird that one 
sees is a Chat; and the handsomest amongst these I 
hold to be a coal-black little gentleman, with a dazzlingly 
white tail traversed by a single black bar. 
The Dusky Chat inhabits the south of Europe, Spain 
especially; it is replaced in Upper Egypt and Nubia by 
another allied species, much resembling it in colour. A 
single pair of these birds will enliven the most barren 
