September 21, 191 1] 



NATURE 



383 



ARGENTINA AND THE ANDES.' 



THE author has gathered his Argentine experience 

 from two prolonged sojourns at the estancia of 

 settler dating back to 1868. He staved 



in the country for more than a year, and since his notes 

 were submitted lo English estancieros of experience, 

 the present book may reasonably be assumed to con- 

 tain no errors of importance ; it gives us a very fair 

 idea of the actual life, and also of 

 the conditions, which prevailed in 

 earlier times. 



The homesteads, built like forts, 

 the boundless cattle runs, en- 

 counters with Indians, the hunting 

 trips in the wilds, have all cnanged 

 for a better and much duller state 

 of things. The Indians have re- 

 treated or vanished before the 

 rapidly advancing civilisation ; the 

 runs are all fenced in, and to visit 

 some lag 01 m. where alone interest- 

 ing bird life might be watched, is 

 likely to mean trespass! 



Tlv- influence of the industrious 

 Italians i- --teadily transforming the 

 Hkmpas into interminable agricul- 

 tural fields, a change which is 

 spreading further and further to 

 the Wist. The process is as 

 follows. The owner of undeveloped 

 blocks of land of his domain of, 

 say, fifty square miles, accepts a 

 number of Italian time-squatters, 

 who after having raised crops of 

 Indian corn, wheat, or linseed for 

 several years, are moved on to 

 another block, whilst the former is 

 then permanently sown with alf- 

 alfa, i.e. lucerne. These pioneer- 

 ing or preparatory cultivators are North Italians; the 

 Southerners stick to the towns. A family takes up 



from 700 to 800 acres ; they find themselves in every- 

 thing, and pay a quarter of the produce as rent. This 

 is a better plan than their taking land "on halves," 

 the owner supplying them in this case with everything, 

 an arrangement which necessitates capital and produces 

 friction. The author has carefully 

 gone into these and kindred 

 economic questions. 



However, the best description of 

 such a land, with scenery none and 

 the natives gone, cannot rise above 

 the level of a stockfarm, in spite of 

 accounts of ensilage, the lassoing, 

 branding, and counting of stock, 

 and the invasion by locusts. There- 

 are some interesting observations. 

 The native-born cattle and sheep 

 have learned to avoid eating the 

 poisonous weed romerilla (unfor- 

 tunately animals and plants are 

 scarcely ever mentioned excepl by 

 their vernacular names, and our 

 author does not profess to be a 

 naturalist), but the imported 

 horses, bulls, and rams have to be 

 taught not to eat this plant. They 

 are tied up, and the collected weeds 

 are burned to the windward of them, 

 so that they are well smoked, after 

 which they dislike the green plant. 

 The pampas grass is said to be 

 dying out where it comes into con- 

 tact with this dreary civilisation, 

 and this shrinking seems to take 

 place in a round-about way. For- 

 merly, when all the pasture was native and coarse, 

 the cattle did not touch the still coarser pampas 

 grass; now, when the pasture consists nearly every- 

 where of lucerne, the cattle go for the grass as a 



-Penitentes, 



1 "Argentine Plains at 

 Expedition into the Ande 

 Fisher Unwin, iqii.) Pri 



:iers : Life on a 

 Larden. Pp. 



(Londo 



NO. 2l86, VOL. 87] 



change of diet, or tonic, and thus keep the tussocks 

 stunted, which ultimately succumb to the repeated 

 cropping. The pampas are a land of promise for the 

 energetic young man ; if he begins early, and is 

 prepared to work hard, he ma) - , without capital, force 



