Grass 



shrubs and trees. But on the dry levels it prevents 

 any ordinary tree from growing. One sees small 

 shrubs, ten years old or more, which have patiently 

 developed in every year a set of branches and stems 

 which have been annually burnt away again. 



Some trees are, however, able to withstand the fires. 

 The curious tree Euphorbias are almost fire-proof, and 

 there are a very few others with a thick gummy bark 

 that are not destroyed. Such trees endeavour to form 

 a forest, and might perhaps in time form a nucleus of 

 vegetation sappy and fresh enough to resist the fires. 2 



After such a fire the ground is black with cinders, 

 and every breeze fills one's eyes, ears, and nostrils with 

 half-burnt dust. Yet it is extremely beautiful, for after 

 a shower of rain brilliant little flowers are springing 

 up everywhere, and later on small green leaves begin 

 to appear from the blackened ground. 



But such fires are not confined to the table-lands of 

 Uganda. The tall elephant grass in the Semliki valley 

 is good pasture when young, for the cattle grow fat and 

 well-nourished upon it, but it rapidly springs up to a 

 rank growth of 7 feet or more in height and is regularly 

 burnt by the natives. When fully mature it is so 

 strong and dense that the cattle cannot get through it 

 at all, but the waste of valuable feeding stuff by the 

 fires is of course very great. All over South Africa the 

 natives as well as the Boers, who are not much beyond 

 the natives in their methods of agriculture, regularly 

 burn the long dried grass towards the end of the dry 

 season. In Natal this custom has, I think, been for- 

 bidden, but it is still far too prevalent. 



The waste of good vegetable work involved by such 

 proceedings is most reprehensible. Not only are 

 many young plants burnt up altogether, but the surface 

 layers of leaf-mould, dead leaves, twigs, and many 



268 



