CHAPTER III 
STEPPE FAUNAS AND THE TEMPERATE 
STEPPES OF ASIA AND NORTH AMERICA 
To the south of the coniferous forest of Asia lies 
a belt of varying width, characterized by the absence 
or scarcity of trees, and by the periodical growth of 
grasses and other herbaceous plants. This belt of 
steppe land is continually merging into desert, the cold 
desert of the high uplands, or the warm desert of the 
rainless regions to the south. Similarly, the forest sends 
long feelers into it, wherever the banks of a water-course, 
or some favouring condition of soil or local variation of 
climate, make this possible. As Central Asia generally 
is a country of high mean elevation, and as it is remote 
from the sea, the climate is continental in character, 
very hot in summer and very cold in winter. The 
region is also continually swept by very severe storms, 
injurious alike to plant and animal life. Further, 
though the rainfall is always slight, and chiefly con- 
fined to the summer period, there is some reason to 
believe that it is subject to great variation, perhaps 
cyclical in character. 
This very brief description may be said to sum up 
the main features of regions of temperate steppes, and 
the peculiar conditions cause them to be inhabited by 
special types of animals. Some of the conditions which 
we noted in the tundra are here repeated, for indeed 
the tundra is but a special type of steppe. Thus in 
both we have a seasonal and highly local abundance of 
