32 



SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. JO. 



its large white spines, the Boer Bean. Scholia spcciosa, the young 

 beans of which are cooked and eaten, also many interesting Aloes, 

 Lilies, Cotyledons, and Euphorbias. The elephants' foot {Tcstu- 

 dinaria elcphantipes) and many species of asparagus also occur here. 

 The Karroid plateau was seen only during the rest period, when its 

 vegetation, which consists of desert grasses and shrubs, is in appear- 

 ance identical with portions of the Great Basin in Nevada. Especially 

 interesting features of this desert are the great number of species of 









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tt^HB^t^Tti »^ *!• 'f^SM 



Fig. 44. — On the Karroid Plateau, west vi DcAaar. This desert shrub, 

 known as Karroo bush (Pentzia), is a vakiable forage plant, resembling our 

 bud sage of the Nevada and Utah deserts. Cattle, sheep and ostrich are the 

 chief grazing" animals. 



Mesembryanthemum, several of which are edible, and the Karroo 

 bush (Pentzia), a valuable forage plant, areas of which resemble in 

 general appearance our Bud Sage areas of Nevada and Wyoming. 



Passing northwest to the region about Kimberley, there is a 

 scattered growth of Acacias, over an open desert grass type similar 

 in some ways to the vegetation of west Texas and portions of Arizona 

 and New Mexico. The high grasslands of the Transvaal, on the 

 other hand, with a grass vegetation dominated by Thoncda forskolii, 

 reminds one of Andropogon scopariits areas in the drier portions of 



