ILLYRIAN KARST 287 



heaths, waste lands and rough pastures of feather-grass 

 and andropogon or golden-beard grass. Not seldom even 

 bush and tb'irsty grass-lands disappear entirely : the soil 

 is washed away and nothing is left but deserts of naked 

 rock. The upper zone is better preserved and exhibits 

 stately forests of mixed beeches and conifers of great 

 beauty and a rich variety of plant forms. Interspersed 

 among the forests and spreading into an alpine zone are 

 to be found extensive and lush meadows and pastures: 

 these are best represented on the outcrops of older rocks 

 which form the core and summits of many of the inland 

 mountain ranges. 



Po Valley. Well enclosed on all sides but one by 

 mountains and lying very low and level, receiving there- 

 fore but a scanty rainfall, and having as a consequence 

 a rather extreme climate, the big alluvial plain of north 

 Italy possesses conditions of soil and climate which dif- 

 ferentiate it at once from neighbouring Mediterranean 

 lands, but liken it to the Hungarian puszta and to the 

 Rumanian and Russian steppe. 



What appearance the virgin alluvium originally pre- 

 sented, it is difficult to say after so many centuries of culti- 

 vation and alteration. Certain it is that it does not bear 

 the stamp of the typical Mediterranean vegetation ; that 

 it owes its great fertility to the abundant irrigation pro- 

 duced by a network of rivers and* canals, and presents 

 a striking similarity to the plain of the Ganges. Its 

 actual tree-growth is largely of the broad-leaved, sum- 

 mer-green type, either planted or in river-woods. It 

 seems probable that besides flood-meadows and marshes, 

 dry grass-lands with a steppe character once played an 

 important part in the natural landscape, but of these 

 few traces are left : for these reasons the plain of the 

 Po stands apart as a geographical unit. 



