Scrub 



fact has not been without its influence in the history 

 of the island. 



The botany of a few years hence will no doubt be 

 able to say definitely what those various scrubs, Maqui 

 5 to 7 feet, Cistus 3 to 4 feet, Labiates 2 to 3 feet, and 

 little thorn-cushions really mean as regards climate and 

 possible use of the country by man. 



This will be of the first importance to the British 

 Empire (supposing that it continues to exist), for such 

 scrubs are common in South Africa and in Australia. 



The really difficult point is to know how much 

 allowance has to be made for at least 6000 years of the 

 goat, which is a vegetable Apollyon, and of other grazing 

 animals. Carthage, Greece, and Italy became surely 

 prosperous in the first instance by their agriculture, 

 not by foreign commerce. Where are the cypress 

 and cedar forests of Asia Minor and Judaea ? What 

 difference did they make in the rainfall and fertility of 

 the Eastern Mediterranean ? 



The Protea or sugar bush of Cape Colony is essen- 

 tially similar to the Mediterranean scrub. In South 

 and West Australia, woody little shrubs or dwarf trees 

 seem very often to form characteristic scrub or bush, 

 which is perhaps botanically equivalent to the Corsican 

 maqui. The actual plants are of course utterly different. 

 Eucalyptus, Wattle-acacias, Casuarinas, Proteaceae, 

 Myrtaceae, and Epacridaceae replace but correspond 

 to the Mastic, Cistus, and Erica arborea of the Mediter- 

 ranean. In Cape Colony there is a true Erica associa- 

 tion which resembles the Mediterranean associations 

 even more closely. 



There is also in California the ''Chaparral " associa- 

 tion, which has hard-leaved shrubs, dwarf oaks, a 

 strange shrubby sort of Papaveraceae very like the 

 gum-cistus and many gummy plants. 



314 



