Chap. V. FAILURE OF GRASS — NEW PLANTS. 99 



The landscape was uninviting ; the hills, destitute of trees, were 

 of a dark-brown colour, and the scanty vegetation on the plains 

 made me feel that they deserved the name of Desert more than 

 the Kalahari. When first taken possession of, these parts are 

 said to have been covered with a coating of grass, but that has 

 disappeared with the antelopes which fed upon it, and a crop of 

 mesembryanthemums and crassulas occupies its place. It is curious 

 to observe how, in nature, organizations the most dissimilar are 

 mutually dependent on each other for their perpetuation. Here 

 the original grasses were dependent for dissemination on the 

 grass-feeding animals, which scattered the seeds. When, by the 

 death of the antelopes, no fresh sowing was made, the African 

 droughts proved too much for this form of vegetation. But even 

 this contingency was foreseen by the Omniscient One ; for, as we 

 may now observe in the Kalahari Desert, another family of plants, 

 the mesembryanthemums, stood ready to neutralize the aridity 

 which must otherwise have followed. This family of plants pos- 

 sesses seed-vessels which remain firmly shut on their contents 

 while the soil is hot and dry, and thus preserve the vegetative 

 power intact during the highest heat of the torrid sun ; but when 

 rain falls, the seed-vessel opens and sheds its contents just when 

 there is the greatest probability of their vegetating. In other 

 plants heat and drought cause the seed-vessels to burst, and shed 

 their charge. 



One of this family is edible {Mesembryanthemum edule) ; another 

 possesses a tuberous root, which may be eaten raw ; and all are 

 furnished with thick fleshy leaves, having pores capable of im- 

 bibing and retaining moisture from a very dry atmosphere and 

 soil, so that, if a leaf is broken during a period of the greatest 

 drought, it shows abundant circulating sap. The plants of this 

 family are found much further north, but the great abundance 

 of the grasses prevents them from making any show. There, 

 however, they stand, ready to fill up any gap winch may occur in 

 the present prevailing vegetation; and should the grasses dis- 

 appear, animal life would not necessarily be destroyed, because a 

 reserve supply, equivalent to a fresh act of creative power, has 

 been provided. 



One of this family, M. turbiniforme, is so coloured as to blend 

 in well with the hue of the soil and stones around it; and a 



h 2 



