THE INVASION OF FOREST 



work in November. This is the second stage of the invasion. 

 But if the place has been long neglected, Hawthorns and 

 Rowans, Birch and Ash will be found growing up. These 

 last show what is happening. 



A wood is trying to grow up on the grassland. If left 

 alone, an oak or beech forest would, after many years, spread 

 over all our grass pastures and hay-fields. These tall herbs 

 are the pioneers, and the briers and brambles are | its 

 advanced guard. 



As a matter of fact, by far the greatest part of our 

 agricultural land was a foi-est, but it has been cut down, 

 drained, dug, weeded, hedged, and "huzzed and maazed" 

 with agricultural implements and more or less scientifically 

 selected manures, until it is made to yield good beef, excel- 

 lent mutton, and almost the largest crops per acre in the 

 world. 



Natural grasslands exist, however, in every continent. 



The great Steppes of Southern Russia and the pastures 

 that extend far to the eastward even to the very borders of 

 China, the Prairies of North America, the Pampas of 

 Argentina, the great sheep-farms of Australia, and a large 

 proportion of South Africa, consist of wide, treeless, grassy 

 plains, where forests only occur along the banks of rivers, in 

 narrow hill-valleys, or upon mountains of considerable alti- 

 tude. Upon these great plateaux or undulating hills the 

 rainfall, though it is but small in amount, is equally dis- 

 tributed, so that there is no lengthy and arid dry season. 

 Take the American Prairie, for instance. These valuable 

 lands, once the home of unnumbered bison and hordes of 

 antelopes, lie between the ancient forests of the eastern 

 states and the half-deserts and true salt deserts of the 

 extreme west. Rivers, accompanied in their windings by 



220 



