GRASSES 183 



closely interwoven seed-bearing heads are so delicate 

 that you appear to be walking over acres of a thick 

 diaphanous carpet of intangible mauve. 



There can be no doubt, however, that African 

 grasses may be confidently catalogued amongst 

 those of her annoyances which often amount to 

 a danger. Their principal objection consists in 

 their pertinaceous inexplicable reappearance in the 

 most carefully tended gardens after every shower 

 of rain, and their danger in the fact that where 

 neglected they shut the air from the soil and enable 

 it to bottle up its miasmatic exhalations below 

 the surface, so that when the time comes for the 

 husbandman to turn over and cleanse his land, 

 he is almost as sure of fever as he who scorns a 

 mosquito net and scoffs at quinine. 



But apart from grasses, be they kindly or spiteful, 

 repulsive or attractive, there yet remain to be con- 

 sidered the beauties of the marsh, a locality which 

 I am well aware does not suggest in its name alone 

 the probability of the presence of interesting forms 

 of life, but which, in Africa at least, possesses them 

 none the less. 



Once through the reed-surrounded margin, in 

 which you have doubtless sustained some loss of 

 blood from the sharp-pointed blades of the inevit- 

 able spear grass, your eye is immediately plucked 

 to the pale blue water lilies, whose fragrant heads 

 dot the surface of the shallow water, their broad 

 green leaves affording secure foothold to long- 

 limbed stilts, and other species of nimble-footed 

 water fowl, which run confidently from one to the 

 other, their eyes fixed upon the water. Sharing 



