VINES. 89 



every night, the seeds are dropped over the grazing 

 grounds, in this simple, way, with a regularity which could 

 not be matched except at the cost of an immense amount 

 of labour. The place becomes in the course of a few 

 years a sheep farm, as these animals thrive on such herbage. 

 As already mentioned, some plants of this family are fur- 

 nished with an additional contrivance for withstanding 

 droughts, viz., oblong tubers, which, buried deep enough 

 beneath the soil for complete protection from the scorch- 

 ing sim, serve as reservoirs of sap and nutriment during 

 those rainless periods which recur perpetually in even the 

 most favoured spots of Africa. I have adverted to this 

 peculiarity as often seen in the vegetation of the Desert £ 

 and, though rather out of place, it may be well, — while 

 noticing a clever imitation of one process in nature by 

 the Cape farmers, — to suggest another for their considera- 

 tion. The country beyond south lat. 18 abounds in three 

 varieties of grape-bearing vines ; and one of these is fur- 

 nished with oblong tubers every three or four inches along 

 the horizontal root. They resemble closely those of the 

 asparagus. This increase of power to withstand the 

 effects of climate might prove of value in the more arid 

 parts of the Cape Colony, grapes being well known to be an 

 excellent restorative in the debility produced by heat ; by 

 engrafting, or by some of those curious manipulations 

 which we read of in books on gardening, a variety might be 

 secured better adapted to the country than the foreign 

 vines at present cultivated. The Americans find that 

 some of their native vines yield wines superior to those 

 made from the very best imported vines from France 

 and Portugal. What a boon a vine of the sort contem- 

 plated would have been to a Rhenish missionary I met at a 

 part in the west of the colony called Kbenezer, whose 

 children had never seen flowers, though old enough to talk 

 about them ! 



The slow pace at which we wound our way through the 

 colony made almost any subject interesting. The attention 

 is attracted to the names of different places, because they 

 indicate the former existence of buffaloes, elands, and 

 elephants, which are now to be found only hundreds of 

 miles beyond. A few blesbucks {Antilope pygarga), gnus, 

 bluebucks, (A. cerulea), steinbucks, and the ostrich. 

 (Struthio camel us), continue, like the Bushmen, to maintain 

 a precarious existence when all the rest are gone. The 



