Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/66

 48 NOETH-WEST AFRICA. Tripolitana also possesses, especially in the beds of its wadies, vast forests of the talha, or Arabian ueacia, which always grows in a scattered way, but none the less presents a pleasant spectacle to travellers emerging from the bare and stony hamadas. Some of these acacias attain the proportions of almond trees, but on the outskirts of the forests, and especially on sites with a northern aspect, they dwindle to mere shrubs. The gum distilled by them is of excellent quality, fully equal to that of Senegambia, but it is little used in the country. The sodr {zizif pints htus), so common that it has given the name of Sodriya to a whole district in west Tripolitana, the mastic, batum (pistachio), and most of the shrubs found in the thickets of Southern Italy, also belong to the wild flora of this region, where they often clothe the slopes of the hills with a dense mantle of verdure. The tamarisk and the rtem or rctama grow on the slightly saline low- lying grounds. The shi, or wormwood, to which camels are specially partial, is dotted in tufts over the stony steppes ; and the lecanora deHertorum, a species of edible lichen, covers certain tracts here and there on the plateau of the desert. Characteristic of these plateaux is also the beshna, a species differing in no respect from the alfa grass of Algeria, and which, like it, has also begun to be exported for the European paper-mills. The natives have a notion that they can get rid of their ailments by transferring them to this plant. Camel-riders are sometimes seen dismounting and kneeling over a tuft of alfa, which they carefully knot together, hoping thereby to secure their maladies to the stalk. Fauna of Tripolitana. The fauna of Tripolitana differs from that of the surrounding regions only so far as it is less rich in species. Wild and domestic animals are here less numerous than in Mauritania. The uplands are infested neither by lions nor panthers, while the lack of permanent rivers has caused the crocodile to disappear, just as in the interior the disafforestation of the country has proved fatal to the elephant. The steppes would be admirably suited for ostrich farming ; but it is uncertain whether this animal still survives in this region. If any are to be found, it can only be in the less accessible districts of the Red Ilamada. Recently a few ostriches have been imported from Bumu, and some Italians, although with little success, have turned their attention to the breeding of this ** winged racer," which could thrive nowhere better than on the extensive plains of Jefara. In some districts, notably the Jofra oasis and the coastlands around the Great Syrtis, the carnivora are represented neither by the hyajna nor even by the jackal, the only wild beasts of this class being the fennec and the fox. Hares, rabbits, a few species of gazelles and antelopes, marmots with long white-tufted tails, the African moufflon or wild sheep, such is the game that most abounds in Tripolitana. The stony hamddas are intersected in every direction by the tracks of gazelles, much narrower than the paths laid down by man, and thoroughly cleared of any sharp stones, that might wound the delicate feet of these graceful creatures. Amongst the reptiles more commonly met is the sand gecko, which is furiously