6 The Naturalist in La Plata. 



uniform everlasting verdure. There are patches, 

 sometimes large areas, where- it does not grow, and 

 these are carpeted by small creeping herbs of a 

 livelier green, and are gay in spring with flowers, 

 chiefly of the composite and papilionaceous kinds ; 

 and verbenas, scarlet, purple, rose, and white. On 

 moist or marshy grounds there are also several 

 lilies, yellow, white, and red, two or three flags, and 

 various other small flowers ; but altogether the 

 flora of the pampas is the poorest in species of any 

 fertile district on the globe. On moist clayey 

 ground flourishes the stately pampa grass, Gynerium 

 argenteum, the spears of which often attain a height 

 of eight or nine feet. I have ridden through many 

 leagues of this grass with the feathery spikes high 

 as my head, and often higher. It would be im- 

 possible for me to give anything like an adequate 

 idea of the exquisite loveliness, at certain times and 

 seasons, of this queen of grasses, the chief glory of 

 the solitary pampa. Everyone is familiar with it in 

 cultivation ; but the garden-plant has a sadly 

 decaying, draggled look at all times, and to my 

 mind, is often positively ugly with its dense wither- 

 ing mass of coarse leaves, drooping on the ground, 

 and bundle of spikes, always of the same dead 

 white or dirty cream-colour. Now colour — the 

 various ethereal tints that give a blush to its cloud- 

 like purity — is one of the chief beauties of this 

 grass on its native soil ; and travellers who have 

 galluped across the pampas at a season of the year 

 when the spikes are dead, and white as paper or 

 parchment, have certainly missed its greatest charm. 

 The plant is social, and in some places where 



