RICHEST LANDS IN THE WORLD 



necessary to say a little more about its habits and its 

 object in life. 



The most interesting and curious point is the way in 

 which it grows in dense thickets ; the main stem is really 

 horizontal and below the water, but it gives off a number of 

 upright stalks. Now every flood will carry in amongst the 

 stalks quantities of silt and rubbish. Those upright stems 

 will sift the water : all sorts of floating material, sand, silt, 

 dead leaves, fruit, etc., are left amongst them. So that such 

 a marsh or bed of Phragmites is gradually, flood by flood, 

 collecting the deposits of mud, and the bed becomes every 

 year more shallow. At the edge of the marsh there is 

 scarcely any water visible, and grasses and other plants are 

 beginning to grow between the Phragmites stems. Even- 

 tually these latter are choked out, and a marshy alluvial flat 

 occupies the site of the old reed-bed. 



So that the work of Phragmites is of the greatest possible 

 importance : it has to form those fertile alluvial flats which 

 are found along the course of every great river, and which 

 are by far the most valuable lands in the whole world. 



Look, for instance, at the population of Belgium, Holland, 

 and Lower Germany, and notice how dense it is upon the 

 alluvial flats where the Meuse, Rhine, and other rivers 

 approach the sea. It is just the same in Britain. London 

 lies on the great alluvial flats of the Thames, Glasgow on 

 the Clyde, Liverpool on the Mersey. In China it is the 

 Yang-tze-kiang valley (especially near its mouth) ; in India, 

 the Ganges, of lower Bengal, and in the Argentine the La 

 Plata River, which show the greatest accumulations of 

 humanity. In every case it is the rich flat alluvium, which 

 is exceedingly fertile when drained and cultivated, that has 

 originally attracted so many people. 



2XO 



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