INTRODUCTORY 17 



Wild Flowers (An Impression on White Nile}. Nature is 

 chary of ornament on these sun-scorched and desiccated plains. 

 Away from actual touch of water there can neither exist flowers 

 nor any conspicuous variety of plant-life beyond the universal 

 halfa-grass, mimosa, and other starveling shrub. How could 

 it be otherwise when every winter the hungry earth with all 

 its productions is devastated by fire? Nothing but sapless 

 die-hards such as those named can survive the ordeal. Canes 

 and papyrus, deep-rooted in " the water that is under the 

 earth," may endure; but for all the less prehistoric flora, the 

 annual veld-burning spells a death-warrant, and with the 

 absence of flowers there follows naturally that of butterflies. 



The blackened desolation left after this grass-burning 

 presents to British eye a melancholy not to say a hideous 

 monotony ; yet it is marvellous how rapidly the new growth 

 springs away from soil sun-parched to cast-iron consistency. 

 Such, moreover, is the ferocious fecundity of summer, and its 

 densely massed vegetation, that whole clumps here and there defy 

 even fire; everywhere sporadic patches of half-charred skeletons 

 still stand upright welcome aids, these, to the stalker ! 



The rapid renewal of growth under such conditions is 

 eloquent of the richness of the soil and prophetic of the 

 results that would attend irrigation. 



Butterflies (An Impression). -To an inexpert eye the Sudan 

 furnishes nothing like the beauty-display which, further south, 

 delights one's sight ; nor are its types so markedly dissimilar 

 from those of Europe or better, of the Palaearctic region (which 

 sounds more scientific). Most noticeable are their obvious 

 affinities with our own swallowtails, clouded yellows, orange- 

 tips, painted ladies, and brimstones, besides innumerable small 

 blues and coppers, just such as one may see at home. True, 

 that gaudy beauty, Danaz's, occasionally flaunts its tropical 

 splendour so conspicuous and yet so careless of danger 

 because so we are taught, though I doubt the deduction it 

 is " protected " by malodorous effluvia ; and, more rarely, I 

 have recognised the pansy - like gem Junonia (probably 

 /. orithiya), that is ubiquitous from the Equator south- 

 wards. Apart from these two and both are rare nothing 

 specially strikes the passing traveller as being extra-Palaearctic. 



