426 Dr Aitchison on Botanical Features of the [sess. lhi. 



brethren, besides several pot herbs, which are not used in 

 England. Outside the orchards we come upon fields of wheat, 

 barley, melons, cotton, tobacco, and occasionally opium. 

 No crops worth growing can be produced under 3500 feet 

 altitude, without irrigation, owing to the absence of dew in 

 summer under that "altitude, and two crops are never 

 obtained from the same land in one season. 



From Herat westwards the irrigation is all led from the 

 Hari-rud river by means of canals. Wheat is the chief 

 crop ; the grain is certainly not equal in quality to that 

 produced in the Punjab. Most of this is exported, and 

 chiefly, it is said, to Turkistan. The next most valuable 

 crop is that of the water melon, which is entirely kept 

 for local use ; on these the inhabitants live, with bread 

 alone, for two or three months during the year. These are 

 very fine and extremely sweet, containing so much saccharine 

 matter that the juice is said to be converted into a syrup in 

 Herat. Barley is chiefly grown for the use of cattle, either 

 as grain or it is cut green for fodder ; cotton and tobacco 

 apparently occur only in sufficiency for local consumption. 

 Beyond the fields, and where the effects of irrigation 

 cease, the countiy is a dreary arid waste, more especially 

 in the vicinity of villages, as seen in our march from Pahir 

 to Khusan, since every twig and scrap of material that can 

 be so employed is used as fuel by the inhabitants, and all 

 herbage is utterly destroyed by the donkeys, goats, and sheep 

 of the village. There is a great absence of fuel, but, not- 

 witlistanding this, all manure is carefully applied to the 

 orchards or fields ; none is Ijurnt, as is the habit in India. 

 Tlie barren character of the country, and the want of 

 indigenous trees, is due to the extreme dryness of the soil 

 and aridity of the atmosphere, witli the great extremes of 

 intense winter cold and summer heat, the temperature fall- 

 ing some degrees below zero in winter, and rising for some 

 days over 105° in the shade in summer. The struggle of 

 plant life for existeiice is great. The plants vvliich are seen 

 to exist through it all are either annuals or those possessing 

 great root stocks, tubers, tuberous roots, rhizoines, bulbs, or 

 other such structural developments as assist them to baffle 

 and survive througli the extremes of temperature. When 

 there is moisture, as on the islands in the river and along 



