THE ASIATIC STEPPES AND THEIR FAUNA. 87 



superficial observer it may seem an easy thing to characterize these 

 steppes, but the difficulty of the task is soon felt by the careful 

 observer. For the steppes are not so invariably uniform, so ab- 

 solutely changeless as is usually supposed. They have their time 

 of blooming and their time of withering, their summer and their 

 winter aspects, and some variety at every season is implied in the 

 fact that there are mountains and valleys, streams and rivers, lakes 

 and marshes. The monotony is really due to the thousand -fold 

 repetition of the same picture, what pleased and even charmed 

 when first seen becoming tame by everyday familiarity. 



The Russian applies the word steppe, which we have borrowed 

 from his language, to all unwooded tracts in middle latitudes, when 

 they are of considerable extent, and bear useful vegetation. It mat- 

 ters not whether they be perfectly flat or gently undulating plains, 

 highlands or mountains, whether there be patches of fat, black soil, 

 admitting of profitable agriculture, or merely great tracts of poor 

 soil covered w r ith such vegetation as grows without man's aid, and 

 is useful only to the nomadic herdsman. This wide usage of the 

 term is convenient, for throughout the whole region we find the 

 same plants rising from the ground, the same types of animal life, 

 and approximately the same phenomena of seasonal change. 



Unwooded the steppe-lands must be called, but they are not 

 absolutely treeless. Neither shrubs nor trees are awanting where 

 the beds of the streams and rivers form broad and deep valleys. 

 In very favourable circumstances, willows, white and silver poplars, 

 grow to be lofty trees, which may unite in a thick fringe by the 

 river banks, or birches may establish themselves and form groves 

 and woods, or pines may plant their feet firmly on the sand-dunes, 

 and form small settlements, which, though not comparable to true 

 forests, are, at least, compact little woods, like the growths along the 

 river-banks. But, after all, such wooded spots are exceptions, they 

 constitute to some extent a foreign element in the steppe scenery, 

 and suggest oases in a desert. 



At one place the steppe may stretch before the eye as a bound- 

 less plain, here and there gently undulating; at another place 

 the region has been much upheaved, is full of variety, and may 



