a is delightful. Nowhere in
Algeria can be found more genial temperature or clearer skies, and while
in summer the thermometer often registers 110 deg. F. in the shade, and
90 deg. at night, the pure dryness of the air in this practically
rainless region makes the heat endurable. The only drawback to the
climat is the prevalence of high cold winds in winter. These winds cause
temperatures as low as 36 deg., but the mean reading, on an average of
ten years, is 73 deg.

In the oasis are some 200,000 fruit trees, of which about 150,000 are
date-palms, the rest being olives, pomegranates and apricots. In the
centre of the oasis is the old kasbah or citadel.

In 1844 the duc d'Aumale occupied this fort, and here, on the night of
the 12th of May of that year, the 68 men who formed the French garrison
were, with one exception, massacred by Arabs. In the fort are a few
fragments of Roman work--all that remains of the Roman post Ad Piscinam.

Biskra is the capital of the Ziban (plural of Zab), a race of mixed
Berber and Arab origin, whose villages extend from the southern slopes
of the Aures to the Shat Melrir. These villages, built in oases dotted
over the desert, nestle in groves of date-palms and fruit trees and
waving fields of barley. The most interesting village is that of Sidi
Okba, 12 m. south-east of Biskra. It is built of houses of one story
made of sun-dried bricks. The mosque is square, with a flat roof
supported on clay columns, and crowned by a minaret. In the north-west
corner of the mosque is the tomb of Sidi Okba, the leader of the Arabs
who in the 1st century of the Hegira conquered Africa for Islam from
Egypt to Tangier. Sidi Okba was killed by the Berbers near this place in
A.D. 682. On his tomb is the inscription in Cufic characters, "This is
the tomb of Okba, son of Nafi. May God have mercy upon him." No older
Arabic inscription is known to exist in Africa.

BISLEY, a village of Surrey, England, 3-1/2 m. N.W. of Woking. The
ranges of the National Rifle Association were transferred from Wimbledon
here in 1890. (See RIFLE.)

BISMARCK, OTTO EDUARD LEOPOLD VON, PRINCE, duke of Lauenburg
(1815-1898), German statesman, was born on the 1st of April 1815, at the
manor-house of Schonhausen, his father's seat in the mark of
Brandenburg. The family has, since the 14th century, belonged to the
landed gentry, and many members had held high office in the kingdom of
Prussia. His father (d. 1845), of whom