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D. T. MacDOUGAL 



chewed up by these animals. As a result of this habit vegetation 

 is generally obliterated near the track and the careless observer 

 might conclude it entirely absent. The rider, however, sits aloft 

 with his head at least ten feet from the ground and if keen-eyed 

 may get good \'iews of minute objects at some distance although it 

 is often not easy to distinguish clumps of plants from rocks, a 

 fact that caused us to make many tedious detours. 



The second day of our journe}^ in the Libyan desert was one in 

 which no plant in place, living or dead, was seen from the time 

 that we started at sunrise until we went into a dry camp among 

 some low hills at sunset. No note had been taken of the matter 

 on the afternoon of the previous day, but we started on the morn- 

 ing of the third day and made five or six miles before we encoun- 

 tered a small patch of dead stems, much like small tomato plants, 

 in a depression at the base of a small hill, which had been scoured 

 out by sand and wind. There were evidences to the effect that a 

 rainstorm had occurred a year or two previously and the run-off 

 from the little hill had come down as if from a roof furnishing suffi- 

 cient moisture for a place about as large as a kitchen garden in 

 which the seeds of these annuals, probably transported to the 

 place by wind, had germinated. 



Other wide, bare spaces were crossed from time to time which 

 measured a few miles across, and the surface of a windswept table 

 land between Farafra and Baharia that occupied us for eleven 

 hours in crossing was without plants, the species below both rims 

 being a tufted grass. 



It was notable that birds, Hzards, and gazelles were seen in these 

 bare places as well as beetles and perhaps other insects. The 

 larger animals have a long radius of action and might traverse any 

 of the bare places, although as may well be understood manj^ of 

 them may pass their entire existence without water except the small 

 proportion obtained in the indurated and leathery plants upon 

 which they feed. It was not easy to determine as to the food of 

 the lizards and beetles. As the Bedouin says the latter live upon 

 pebbles, the problem is left for solution to other biological travel- 

 ers. In closing it may be said that the lack of vegetation in such 

 places as those described is not ultimately due to lack of water 



