There are probably some species of the dog tribe in the oasis which are new. One evening near Mut I happened to be returning to the town about sunset, and noticed a fox that struck me as being of an unusual appearance. Shortly after I first saw him, he went to the far side of a low mound of earth; I was consequently able to approach him unseen, and managed to get within about ten yards of him before attracting his attention. He then bolted; but not before I had had a good view of him.
He was a fairly large fox of a greyish brown colour, and carried a very fine brush. But his most striking peculiarity was that he was covered with large black spots, which appeared to be about an inch and a half in diameter. On questioning the inhabitants, I found that a spotted fox was occasionally seen in the oasis, but was not apparently very common. Markings of this nature are, I believe, quite unknown in any fox, so that this one probably was of unusual interest. Unfortunately, I was unable to secure a specimen.
In addition to the jackals and foxes, an occasional hyena is said to appear in the oasis, but none, so far as I heard, were seen while I was there.
A curious fact in relation to the jackals in Dakhla is that they appear to be to a great extent vegetarians, living largely upon the fallen fruit in the plantations—a fact which recalls the story of the fox and the grapes.
Gazelles used to be fairly numerous in the scrub-covered areas in and around the oases, but I invariably found them extremely shy and difficult to approach. Once, in the distance, I caught sight of a pair that looked interesting. One of them had an extremely pale coat, and was perhaps a rim (Loder’s gazelle); but the other was of a deep reddish—almost chestnut—colour that, from a distance, looked unlike any known variety. The usual gazelle found in these parts is the common Dorcas; but these two looked entirely different. The natives do not seem to distinguish between the various varieties, all of which bear a strong resemblance to each other, classing them altogether as “gazelle.”
Scorpions swarm in the older buildings of the town, and the natives get frequently stung, sometimes, I was told, with fatal effect. The leaves of a round-leaved plant known as khobbayza[17] are pounded and made into a poultice to apply to their stings—it is said with considerable effect. A native quack doctor from the Nile Valley used to do a considerable trade in little blackish wafers of a composition that he kept secret, which were also said to be very beneficial not only against the stings of scorpions but also in the case of snake bites. One of the native doctors I met in Mut tried them on some of his patients with, he told me, great success. Very large, hairy, yellow spiders, tarantulas perhaps, I saw once or twice, and found the natives very much afraid of them.
In the Nile Valley, curious mud-built tables supported on a single thick leg are used on which to place young children to secure them from the attacks of scorpions and tarantulas that, owing to the overhang of the table, are unable to climb to the top. The table-top itself is surrounded by a low wall to prevent the children from falling off, the crest of the wall itself being often fantastically decorated.
I never came across any snakes at Dakhla, but more than once saw the skin they had shed. There is said to be a long black snake, generally found in or near the water channels, whose bite is considered to be extremely dangerous. The ordinary horned cerastes viper, though often met with in the desert, seems to be rare in the oasis—and the same may be said of the unhorned viper that so much resembles it at first sight. Insects swarm during the hot weather in the oases. Butterflies are scarce, but moths are fairly numerous. In Kharga I caught the cotton moth, but I did not see it in Dakhla. Locusts are almost, I believe, unknown, but the grasshopper tribe are in some parts—Tenida for instance—extremely numerous.
SCORPION-PROOF PLATFORM.