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 contmgency 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 sod. 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 probabfiity 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 {Mesemhryanthemum 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 fiU up any gap wliich may occur in 
the present prevafiing 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. turhiniforme, is so coloured as to blend 
in well with the hue of the soil and stones around it; and a 
H 2 
