Scrub 
fact has not been without its influence in the history 
of the island. 
The botany. of a few years hence will no doubt be 
able to say definitely what those various scrubs, Maqui 
5 to 7 feet, Cistus 3 to 4 feet, Labiates 2 to 3 feet, and 
little thorn-cushions really mean as regards climate and 
possible use of the country by man. 
This will be of the first importance to the British 
Empire (supposing that it continues to exist), for such 
scrubs are common in South Africa and in Australia, 
The really difficult point is to know how much 
allowance has to be made for at least 6000 years of the 
goat, which is a vegetable Apollyon, and of other grazing 
animals, Carthage, Greece, and Italy became surely 
prosperous in the first instance by their agriculture, 
not by foreign commerce. Where are the cypress 
and cedar forests of Asia Minor and Judea? What 
difference did they make in the rainfall and fertility of 
the Eastern Mediterranean ? 
The Protea or sugar bush of Cape Colony is essen- 
tially similar to the Mediterranean scrub, In South 
and West Australia, woody little shrubs or dwarf trees 
seem very often to form characteristic scrub or bush, 
which is perhaps botanically equivalent to the Corsican 
maqui. The actual plants are of course utterly different. 
Eucalyptus, Wattle-acacias, Casuarinas, Proteacez, 
Myrtacez, and Epacridacez replace but correspond 
to the Mastic, Cistus, and Erica arborea of the Mediter- 
ranean. In Cape Colony there is a true Erica associa- 
tion which resembles the Mediterranean associations 
even more closely. 
There is also in California the ‘(Chaparral ” associa- 
tion, which has hard-leaved shrubs, dwarf oaks, a 
strange shrubby sort of Papaveracez very like the 
gum-cistus and many gummy plants. 
314 
