350 THE AESTHETICS OF 



plain with wild rapidity ; after Cooper and Seatsfield, this 

 would be to carry owls to Minerva. 



Situated under similar latitudes and climatal conditions, 

 the Pampas of Buenos Ayres have a character similar to 

 that of the North American prairies, only Man by his 

 influence upon Nature has here and there impressed a 

 peculiar stamp. The Thistle and Artichoke coming with 

 the Europeans, have quickly made themselves masters of 

 the free soil, and with incredible rapidity overspread dis- 

 tricts of many square miles with their spiny vegetation, 

 which has here developed in a luxuriance unknown in 

 Europe. These Thistle-wastes have become a terrible 

 nuisance, themselves robbers, depriving better plants of 

 the soil, inaccessible hiding-places for the great thievish 

 and sanguinary Cats, and the still more dangerous human 

 bandits, the thorny weed of semi-civilization. 



One might almost assert that we are less acquainted with 

 the peculiar Steppes which lie closest to us, than with those 

 natural forms of distant lands which have become almost 

 familiar to us from the descriptions of gifted men, for in 

 fact, one hears only too often in conversation, what mistaken 

 conceptions people have of those extensive plains which are 

 commonly known by the name of the North German 

 Heaths. From the western border of northern France, 

 through Belgium, North Germany and Russia, almost to 

 the eastern confines of Siberia, extends a broad plain rarely 

 interrupted by low chains of hills, and just as rarely affording 

 fitting soil for extensive growth of wood which, on the 

 whole, confines itself to the more favourable soil moistened 

 by the vicinity of rivers. Along the southern border of 

 this plain extends a chain of hills and mountains, now pro- 

 jecting forward like capes into the broad surface, now 



