CAIEO : GAKDENS AND DESERT 227 



vegetation beyond annuals, and the majority of these are 

 planted. 



Still it was ' really and truly the Dropmore of Egypt,' * a noble 

 project ' struggling against adverse conditions. 



p 



Everywhere you turn you are greeted by some English 

 or well-known exotic, struggling to accommodate itself to 

 Egyptian bondage, or rebelliously resenting all poor Mr. 

 Traill's kind attentions, and doing the worst a slave can do, 

 dying on the spot, and breaking his master's heart. (To 

 W. J. H., December 24, 1847.) 



Far more interesting was a trip into the Desert to the Fossil 



Forest. 



Though few plants were to be had, I was anxious to make 

 a few observations on the temperature of the soil and dry- 

 ness of the desert, so that I might know how near the starving 

 and burning point vegetation would exist, as supplementary 

 to our many observations in the Ant. Expedition of how 

 much cold they could bear. 



Completing these a few days later by other experiments at the 

 halfway house to Suez, he found that 



even in the winter time the sun's rays give a heat of 100° 

 to the soil, so that the poor plants have to undergo in winter 

 a change of 56° every day. Here the only water they get 

 is by the dew forming during the night. Unhappy plants ! 

 if their feehngs are like ours, who Hke to drink best when 

 most heated. 



The waste of rolled pebbles and fragments with here and 

 there huge trunks, heaped together in the greatest confusion, 

 all chalcedony and coarse agate, reddish brown against the 

 white of the desert sand, inspires a long disquisition on its 

 geological origin and a smile at Mehemet Ali, for 



At this place the Pasha had sunk a pit for coal : sapiently 

 concluding that so much fossil wood above ground indicated 

 no less below : he, however, did not get through the limestone 

 rock, which is subjacent to the formation to which I presume 

 the fossil wood to belong. 



