7 6 GIANT PAMPAS THISTLES. 



possessed of such valuable qualities for grazing" pur- 

 poses that Kentucky is called " The Blue Grass State. " * 

 This grass assimilates very closely to the " Poa Pratensis " 

 of our own meadows, and is sometimes considered 

 identical with it. f 



As a weed we must notice the wonderful case of 

 the variegated leafed Pampas Thistle ( Carduus Giganteus 

 Variegatus] of South America, which is really in its 

 way one of the marvels of the vegetable world, as in 

 a few weeks it springs up so rapidly as to create 

 prickly and impassable thickets, in which a man on 

 horseback would be lost to view like a needle in a 

 haystack; indeed it would scarcely be an extravagant 

 flight of imagination to conceive the possibility of an 

 army marching out over these lands, and finding their 

 return two or three months later, barred by the 

 growth of these giant thistles (which cover enormous 

 areas in the Banda Oriental and else where ), as effectually 

 as by the bayonets of a superior force drawn up 

 across its line of retreat. The wild Cardoon (Cynara 

 Cardunculus] is another somewhat similar plant, but 

 has a far wider range of growth than the giant thistle 

 in South America. ** 



Here we must close our remarks upon the vegetation 

 of the Great Plains, not because there is any dearth 

 of much that is both interesting and instructive to 

 relate, but because we fear to overload these pages 

 with too great a mass of detail. 



In like manner we must defer for the present all 



* Dictionary of Americanisms, by J. S. Farmer. 

 f Encycl. Brit., 9th Edit., Vol. xiv, p. 43, Article "Kentucky." 

 Voyage of a Naturalist in H.M.S. Beagle, by Charles Darwin, 

 I4th edition, 1879, PP- I1[ 9> I2 and H 8 - 

 ** Ibid., p. 119. 



