Ch. IV] WARM TEMPERATE MOIST SUMMER DISTRICTS 503 



and can display a luxuriant growth on a fertile, virgin soil, rich in soluble mineral 

 nutriment. There in the denser grassy sward all kinds of plants of various families 

 are commingled in a vegetation, varying according to the richness in salts and 

 in the supply of moisture, and composed of plants which are often provided with 

 succulent leaves and lie close to the ground, and which also sometimes afford to 

 man a wholesome and agreeable food — as do various species of Portulaca, — some- 

 times delight his eye by the beauty of their flaming flowers — as do species of 

 Portulaca, of Verbena, especially the lovely scarlet verbena, of Compositae, of 

 Papilionaceae, and of Euphorbia,— and which almost always provide cattle with 

 a food that rapidly fattens them. 



' The low ridges of the boundless pampas are drier, and their vegetation bears 

 the stamp of the characteristics that strike the European by their contrast to his 

 own home. 



' It is not the dense luxuriant grass, interwoven with flowers as in our meadows, 

 but scattered dense tufts of stiff grasses, chiefly species of Stipa and Melica, which 

 rise like islets above the yellowish-brown loam. Wherever the formation is most 

 pronounced, there occurs between these isolated tufts of grass bare loam, which is 

 frequently washed out and carried away by the rain, so that the separate tufts ot 

 grass rest on actual mounds ; but also frequently, especially during the favourable 

 season of the year, it is covered by all kinds of more delicate grasses and herbaceous 

 perennials, few in species, but some of them with beautiful tints of colour. Mingled 

 with the few species of grass of the above-mentioned genera, which certainly 

 give the key-note to the grass vegetation, a number of others occur. . . . Viewed 

 from a distance, these grasses seem to form a close grassy covering, and the pampa 

 presents the appearance of extensive grassy tracts whose colouring varies with the 

 seasons : coal-black in spring, when the old grass has been burned ; bright bluish- 

 green when the young leaves sprout ; later on brownish-green, the colour of the 

 mature grass; finally — at the flowering time— when the silvery white spikes overtop 

 the grass, over wide tracts it seems like a rolling, waving sea of liquid silver. . . . 



' After the Gramineae, the family of plants that is represented in the pampas by 

 the greatest number of individuals is that of Compositae ; usually twiggy under- 

 shrubs with inconspicuous flowers, a bright yellow Solidago alone gleams out from 

 among the others. 



' Apart from these, Verbena, species of Portulaca, of Malva, and a few Papiliona- 

 ceae are chiefly responsible for the meagre floral beauty of the pampa. . . . Reeds 

 and a tall Eryngium frequently grow at the edge of water.' 



iv. GRASSLAND IN AUSTRALIA. 



There are no available descriptions of the extensive savannahs and 

 steppes of the interior of New South Wales (Fig. 267) and Victoria. The 

 grasslands of South Australia, which are frequently interrupted by low 

 sclerophyllous woodland (' scrub ') and desert, and in their most fertile 

 portions are for the most part converted into cornfields, were described as 

 follows by Schomburgk l : — 



1 Schomburgk, op. cit., p. 11. 



