Note 11 — LAGHOUAT.

Tristram remarks that it “seems that the larger wild animals have been rapidly decreasing in numbers and are in process of speedy extinction. Dr. Shaw, 150 years since, enumerates in his travels . . . five species of ruminants, which from his descriptions must be the bubale, the aoudad or wild sheep, the addax, and the gazelle, as well as the stag. . . . As the population has not increased, but rather retrograded, we can only surmise that the substitution of the flint and steel gun for the matchlock of the Bedouin . . . has been fatal in its results to all larger game.” It may be remarked that the French impose such restrictions on the Arab as regards the character of the guns he may use (only the army and certain officials of the government employing modern arms) that for the region visited Tristram’s description holds fairly well for to-day.