TURAN 57 



position, Turan receives rain from none of the surround- 

 ing areas. The winds from the north, which deposit their 

 scanty moisture on the southern and eastern mountain 

 ranges, sweep past the depression without any benefit to 

 it. Its climate is therefore truly desert and extreme, 

 open to excessive variations from the hottest summer to 

 the coldest winter, from scorching winds to icy gales. 

 In this respect, it differs from the sub-tropical deserts. 

 Turan owes what fertility it may possess to its two 

 large rivers the Amu and the Syr. 



Vast territories are left entirely plantless, indeed life- 

 less. They are impassable stretches of moving, heaving 

 sands, and where these are relatively settled, vegetation 

 has succeeded in gaining a foothold. It consists of a brush, 

 now scattered, now in thickets of sand- shrubs and small 

 bushy trees, the whole aspect of which recalls tree-heaths 

 or brooms, the trees possessing tiny leaves or none. The 

 best representative of this flora is the saxaul, fifteen 

 to twenty feet in height and less than a foot thick, whose 

 grey trunk, curved and twisted, resolving itself into 

 numerous scaly, thin, short-segmented twigs, makes it 

 resemble a besom. It stores water in its bark, where- 

 in also the green matter which represents the absent 

 leaves is hidden : other trees have the appearance of the 

 tamarix. This brush effectually binds the sand, and 

 advantage is taken of the fact to resist the encroach- 

 ments of the shifting dunes by means of extensive 

 plantations. 



- No less formidable than these ' red and black deserts ' 

 are the vast level wastes of saline clayey soils, sparsely 

 dotted with dwarf bunches of mostly leafless plants. 

 The vegetation consists of salt-bushes, dusty-grey worm- 

 wood, spreading besoms of bare, broom-like under-shrubs, 

 or crawling and thorny stragglers. Such also is the 



