Heath of Lueneburg 



231 



The Karroo in south Africa, the Brazilian and Chilian 

 deserts in South America, the Sonoran and Chihuahua deserts, 

 and preeminently the arid areas of southern Mexico, offer a 

 wide variety of types of vegetation in which the evolutionary 

 development has been carried much farther, with the acquisition 

 of exaggerated storage functions, representing the extremest 

 and latest stage of differentiation of the sporophyten its long 

 encounter with arid conditions on land areas. 



THE HEATH OF LUENEBURG. 



By Burton Edward Livingston. 



Between the channels of the Weser and the Elbe, as thev 

 lead northwestward with many windings, through the low coun- 

 try that borders the German Ocean, lies a region as full of inter- 

 est to the lover of the out-of-doors as any that he may anywhere 

 come upon. Here is one of the great heath areas of Europe, 

 characterized among the Germans as the Heath of Lueneburg, 

 the Lueneburger Heide. Partly, no doubt, because of its sparse 

 population and the large amount of uncultivated, if not abso- 

 lutely natural land — a condition that favors the long, free ram- 

 bles so dear to the German soul — partly because of the innate love 

 of all Germanic peoples for great, open country, with broad out- 

 looks and a faroff horizon, and partly because of its fame as a region 

 of wonderfully beautiful landscapes and picturesque details, this 

 country has become in the last decade or two a veritable Mecca to 

 summer travellers from all Germany. If improved methods of 

 cultivation do not bring it to an untimely end, the heath seems 

 to bid fair to maintain in German literature a place second only 

 to that of the mountains. Students of plant ecology will re- 

 member Graebner's excellent studies, presented in his Heide 

 N orddeutschlands , wherein the problems of heath vegetation are 

 so ably considered. Numerous other botanical studies have 

 been made in these regions and there is also a rather long list 

 of more general and popular publications upon the heath country, 

 among which a number of excellent guide-books with accurate 

 maps form a not unimportant part. Perhaps the most attractive 



