518 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1914. 
fight against the losing species and by the annual veld-firing assists, 
and even completes, the work of natural selection. 
And not the pygmies of the veld only have thus been struck down. 
The giants, secure in their strength and age, have not escaped. The 
big trees are leafless and sapless like a northern woodland in the midst 
of winter. On the higher ‘‘bults” 50 per cent of the springs and 
boekenhout are quite dead, food for the next veld fire. Among these 
dead trees there were many at least three centuries old—calculated 
from the annulation of timber sawn from them. 
Even the most efficient waterstorers could not survive this terrific 
stretch of drought and heat. In the middle veld the little naevose 
aloe, common on our southern hills, grows plentifully on the flat, 
chiefly in the shade of thick bushes. Where this shade was in any 
way deficient they commenced dropping their leaves from the crowns 
downward, and before the middle of the season they were quite dead. 
Stapelias, those weird daughters of the desert, are here very plentiful. 
Under normal conditions they seem to shun every semblance of 
moisture by growing on barren shelves of rock, collecting a scanty 
soil by means of their own roots; even stapelias hang shrunken and 
flaccid on their rocks, and quite half the plants examined seemed quite 
dead. 
It was a matter for surprise to find one of the best drought resist- 
ers in a larger hypoxis. Not only did it start a fair growth of fronds, 
but in shady places a few sickly flowers even appeared. This plant 
has a medium sized bulb, not nearly so large, compared with its 
growth above ground, as hundreds of others that perished. The bulb 
is enveloped in several layers of dry, perfectly waterproof husks, and 
is filled with a sticky orange-colored liquid. What made it of special 
interest was the fact that it was eagerly sought after and eaten by all 
kinds of animals in preference to any other plant procurable. Even 
the well-fed animals in our team were very keen after it. 
On the animal world the effects were just as far-reaching and 
quite as noticeable. Those animals to whom escape was possible fled 
early from the stricken area—man among the first. The entire middle 
veld is without human inhabitant. Whites and blacks trekked north 
and south along the river ways with their stock as the waters receded, 
and a great many cattle have been sent on to the high country. For | 
all practical purposes the north is a desert, and in many respects a 
worse desert than the Kalahari. In the middle of the day it is a scene 
of utter death and desolation. Not a bird sings, not an insect moves. 
Over everything seems to lie the silence of absolute lifelessness—a 
silence characterized by the true desert tinnitus. Elsewhere it is said 
that the wind bloweth where it listeth. _Here—when there does come 
a breath of air—it has a strong predilection for one direction only; 
straight from the Kalahari, hot and scorching as the breath of an 
