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yellowish tint invades the whole landscape, which 

 assumes the aspect known as the ' buryan '. Now 

 only stronger plants, one to one and a half feet high, 

 can withstand the drought, such as various kinds of 

 spreading thistles, wormwoods, and knapweeds, among 

 which the flowers of the spikenards, larkspurs, eryngos, 

 echinopses, and mallows can hardly throw a little bright- 

 ness ; but even these wither under the continuous 

 drought. Dead stalks, flower halms and straw turn 

 a darker and darker grey, and at the outset of the bad 

 weather, the vast silent plain appears uniformly dead. 

 In the sunk valleys, below the broad levels and in the 

 depressions of the rolling downs, patches or fringes of 

 river woods present the familiar aspect of broad-leaved, 

 summer-green, temperate trees : poplars and willows are 

 the dominant notes of such oases. 



The steppe is the typical pasture land and supports 

 large herds of cattle and horses, to which are added 

 sheep and goats. Under irrigation, however, the ' black 

 earth ' has proved to be of immense fertility, and pastures 

 have slowly retreated before the cornfields and the sugar- 

 beet, much as in the case of the Argentine Pampa and 

 South Australia. The chernozyom reaches the foot of the 

 Caucasus down to the Caspian Sea; but the steppes 

 around the Black and the Caspian seas, on sand, loess, 

 or clay, are not so fertile and retain their pastoral life. 

 Around the Caspian Sea, especially, the soil is mostly 

 salt and the grass steppe gives way to the vermuth or 

 wormwood brushes similar to the ' sage-brush ' of western 

 North America. These brushes form arid wastes whose 

 scattered, silver-grey or hoary bushes, two feet high, 

 showing the bare soil between them, impart a dull 

 appearance to the whole scenery. Even in May, the 

 uniform dark-grey tone is not brightened by the gorgeous 



