THE ASIATIC STEPPES AND THEIR FAUNA. 97 



the picture, and the leaves of others, which wither as rapidly as 

 they unfold, become spots of yellow-green and gold. Seen from a 

 distance, all the colours do indeed merge into an almost uniform 

 gray -green; but near at hand each colour tells, and one sees the 

 countless individual flowers which have now opened, sees them 

 singly everywhere, but also massed together in more favourable 

 spots, where they make the shades of the bushes glorious. Amid 

 the infinite variety of bulbous plants there are exquisite vetches; 

 among many that are unfamiliar there are old friends well known 

 in our flower-gardens ; more and more does the feeling of enchant- 

 ment grow on one, until at last it seems as if one had wandered 

 into an unending, uncared-for garden of flowers. 



With the spring and the flowers the animal life of the steppes 

 appears also to awaken. Even before the last traces of winter are 

 gone, the migratory birds, which fled in autumn, have returned, and 

 when the spring has begun in earnest the winter sleepers open the 

 doors of the burrows within which they have slumbered in death- 

 like trance through all the evil days. As the migratory birds rejoin 

 the residents, so the sleepers come forth and join those mammals 

 which are either careless of winter or know how to survive it at least 

 awake. At the same time the insects celebrate their Easter, hasten- 

 ing from their hidden shelters or accomplishing the last phase of 

 their metamorphosis; and now, too, the newts and frogs, lizards and 

 snakes leave their winter quarters to enjoy in the spring sunshine 

 the warmth indispensable to their activity and full life, and to 

 dream of the summer which will bring them an apathetic happiness. 



The steppe now becomes full of life. Not that the animal life 

 is of many types, but it is abundant and everywhere distributed. 

 The same forms are met with everywhere, and missed nowhere. 

 There are here no hosts of mammals comparable to the herds of 

 antelopes on the steppes of Central Africa, nor to the troops of 

 zebras and quaggas^'^ in the South African karoo, nor to the immea- 

 surable trains of buffaloes on the North American prairies ;i^ nor are 

 the birds of the steppes so numerous as those on the continental 

 shores or on single islands, or on the African steppes, or in equatorial 

 forests. But both birds and mammals enter into the composition of 



(M70J 7 



