CiiAr. V] TROPICAL DISTRICTS WITH DRY SEASONS 365 



exhibit the verdant, refreshing tints of our meadows, as the growing 

 haulms arc alw.ij-s intermingled with others which are dried, either broken 

 down or rod-like erect, and which lend a pale yellow or brownish tint 

 to the otherwise dull green. These dried remains, even in the midst of 

 the rainy season, afford sufficient fuel for a fire, and render it possible for 

 the crop to be partially burnt to the ground, or at any rate singed. Tracts 

 cleared down to the ground by the flames, if seen from a distance, in the 

 first days of their growth, when the countless young shoots and leaf-tips 

 are emerging, often vividly recall the sprouting crops of our own fields. 



Fig. 196. Anoiia senegalensis, grasses and nests of termites. From the West African savannah, 

 Loango. After Pechuel-Losche. 



' The rich show of the flowers of the varied perennials that gives beauty 

 to the meadows of other parts of the earth, the transitory splendour of 

 the bulbous plants of many steppe-districts, are both foreign to the 

 campines. Only in the open are some of Flora's children found scattered : 

 dull red or yellow-flowering indigo-plants, a humble Striga lutea, Louret, 

 with fiery red flowers, the decorative Cassia mimosoides, Linn., with golden 

 yellow ones, occasionally a Clerodendron with brilliant scarlet flowers. 

 More seldom, flourishing among the grasses are species of Vernonia, \'. 

 cinerea, Less., with violet flowers, and V. senegalensis, Desf., with white 

 or light rose-coloured flowers ; the latter being one of the commonest '.' 



' Pechuel-Losche, op. cit., pp. 130-2. 



