5G 
HEATHS AND DESEKTS. 
are not founded eitlier on the nature of things, cr the 
genius of languages. The existence of a heath always sup- 
poses an association of plants of the family of ericas ; the 
steppes of Asia are not everywhere covered with saline 
plants ; the savannahs of Venezuela furnish not only the 
gramma, but with them small herbaceous mimosas, legu- 
mina, and other dicotyledonous plants. The plains of Son- 
; garia, those which extend between the Don and the Volga, 
j and the puszta of Hungary, are real savannahs, pasturages 
abounding in grasses ;* while the savannahs to the east and 
west of the JKoeky Mountains and of New Mexico produce 
chenopodiums containing carbonate and muriate of soda. 
Asia has real deserts destitute of vegetation, in Arabia, in 
Gobi, and in Persia. Since we have become better ac- 
quainted with the deserts in the interior of Africa, so long 
and so vaguely confounded together under the name ot 
desert of Sahara (Zahra) ; it has been observed, that in this 
continent, towards the east, savannahs and pastures are 
found, as in Arabia, situated in the midst of naked and 
barren tracts. It is these deserts, covered with gravel 
and destitute of plants, which are almost entirely wanting 
in the New World. I saw them only in that part of 
Peru, between Amotape and Coquimbo, on the shores of 
the Pacific. These are called by the Spaniards, not llanos, 
* These vast steppes of Hungary are elevated only thirty cr forty 
toises above the level of the sea, which is more than eighty leagues 
distant from them. (See Wahlenberg’s Flora Carpathiamca.) Baron 
Podmanitzky, an Hungarian nobleman, highly distinguished for his 
knowledge of the physical sciences, caused the level of these plains to 
be taken, to facilitate the formation of a canal then projected between 
the Danube and the Theiss. He found the line of division, or the con- 
vexity of the ground, which slopes on each side towards the beds of the 
two rivers, to be only thirteen toises above the height of the Danube, 
The widely extended pastures, which reach in every direction to the 
horizon, are called in the country, Puszta, and, over a distance of many 
leagues, are without any human habitation. Plains of this kind, inter- 
mingled with marshes and sandy tracts, are found on the western side of 
the Theiss, between Qzegled, Csaba, Komloss, and Szarwass ; and on the 
eastern side, between Debreczin, Karczag, and Szoboszlo. The area of 
these plains of the interior basin of Hungary has been estimated, by a 
pretty accurate calculation, to be between two thousand five hundred 
and three thousand square leagues (twenty to a degree). Between 
f'zegled, Szolnok, and Ketskemet, the plain resembles a se.a of sand. 
