LANDSCAPE GARDENERS 47 



has control of the dykes and dams has plenary powers 

 to enter upon any estate in the " dunes " fringing the 

 sea, and then and there to kill, slay, and exterminate 

 the rabbits without asking permission, if, in the judg- 

 ment of its officers, they are weakening the sandhills. 



As the cattle on the New Forest and the rabbits on 

 the downs have dwarfed and sweetened the herbage, 

 so the vast herds of wild game on the African veldt 

 would in past ages have turned that fertile region into 

 a grassy lawn were it not for the unfortunate cessa- 

 tion of almost all rain in the three summer months. 

 During this time the surface becomes so arid that 

 the tread of beasts, instead of compacting it, helps to 

 disintegrate it and to destroy surface grass, and thus 

 the veldt never becomes " turf." 



Happily this is not the case with the clay steppe of 

 the pampas, which Darwin saw and described seventy 

 years ago. He saw the curious phenomenon of a land 

 capable of supporting animal life in quantities almost 

 without parallel elsewhere, a land where the natural 

 grasses were hindered in their growth neither by shrub 

 nor tree, and in parts only broken by brilliant flowers, 

 geraniums, scarlet verbena, wood-sorrel, and cenotherae, 

 stretching like an Atlantic Ocean of green from the 

 sea to the foot-hills of the Cordilleras on the opposite 

 side of the continent. Nature seemed to have left 

 out every product which could take up room which 

 would otherwise be occupied by grasses. There were 

 no useless rocks, and almost no stones ; no trees, to 

 kill herbage by their shade ; few marshes or arid belts 

 of sand or salt ; no mountains. The steppe offered 



