INTRODUCTORY 
17 
Wild Flowers—{An Impression on White Nile). —Nature is 
chary of ornament on these sun-scorched and desiccated plains. 
Away from actual touch of water there can neither exist flowers 
nor any conspicuous variety of plant-life beyond the universal 
halfa-grass, mimosa, and other starveling shrub. How could 
it be otherwise when every winter the hungry earth with all 
its productions is devastated by fire? Nothing but sapless 
die-hards such as those named can survive the ordeal. Canes 
and papyrus, deep-rooted in “ the water that is under the 
earth,” may endure; but for all the less prehistoric flora, the 
annual veld-burning spells a death-warrant, and with the 
absence of flowers there follows naturally that of butterflies. 
The blackened desolation left after this grass-burning 
presents to British eye a melancholy—not to say a hideous 
monotony; yet it is marvellous how rapidly the new growth 
springs away from soil sun-parched to cast-iron consistency. 
Such, moreover, is the ferocious fecundity of summer, and its 
densely massed vegetation, that whole clumps here and there defy 
even fire; everywhere sporadic patches of half-charred skeletons 
still stand upright—welcome aids, these, to the stalker! 
The rapid renewal of growth under such conditions is 
eloquent of the richness of the soil and prophetic of the 
results that would attend irrigation. 
Butterflies—(An Impression). —-To an inexpert eye the Sudan 
furnishes nothing like the beauty-display which, further south, 
delights one’s sight; nor are its types so markedly dissimilar 
from those of Europe—or better, of the Palaearctic region (which 
sounds more scientific). Most noticeable are their obvious 
affinities with our own swallowtails, clouded yellows, orange- 
tips, painted ladies, and brimstones, besides innumerable small 
blues and coppers, just such as one may see at home. True, 
that gaudy beauty, Danais i occasionally flaunts its tropical 
splendour—so conspicuous and yet so careless of danger— 
because—so we are taught, though I doubt the deduction—it 
is “protected” by malodorous effluvia; and, more rarely, I 
have recognised the pansy - like gem Junonia (probably 
J. orithiya ), that is ubiquitous from the Equator south¬ 
wards. Apart from these two—-and both are rare—nothing 
specially strikes the passing traveller as being extra-Palaearctic. 
B 
