Identifier: romanceofplantli1907elli (find matches)
Title: The romance of plant life, interesting descriptions of the strange and curious in the plant world
Year: 1907 (1900s)
Authors: Elliot, George Francis Scott
Subjects: Plants
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott
Contributing Library: The LuEsther T Mertz Library, the New York Botanical Garden
Digitizing Sponsor: The LuEsther T Mertz Library, the New York Botanical Garden

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yield good beef, excel-lent mutton, and almost the largest crops per acre in theworld. Natural grasslands exist, however, in every continent. The great Steppes of Southern Russia and the pasturesthat extend far to the eastward even to the very borders ofChina, the Prairies of North America, the Pampas ofArgentina, the great sheep-farms of Australia, and a largeproportion of South Africa, consist of wide, treeless, grassyplains, where forests only occur along the banks of rivers, innarrow hill-valleys, or upon mountains of considerable alti-tude. Upon these great plateaux or undulating hills therainfall, though it is but small in amount, is equally dis-tributed, so that there is no lengthy and arid dry season.Take the American Prairie, for instance. These valuablelands, once the home of unnumbered bison and hordes ofantelopes, lie between the ancient forests of the easternstates and the half-deserts and true salt deserts of theextreme west. Rivers, accompanied in their windings by 220
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A Bushman Digging up Elephants Foot The Bushman is levering up the root of elephants foot to get the starchy foodinside. He does it by a stick run through a rounded stone. The woman has caughta lizard for the boy to eat. PRAIRIE OF THE UNITED STATES riverside forests, are found (especially in the east). Thereal prairie has a blackish, loamy soil, covered sometimes bythe rich Buffalo or Mesquite grass, which forms a short,velvety covering, not exactly a turf such as we find in Eng-land, but still true grassland. It is only green in earlyspring. From the spring onwards until the end of summer thereis an endless succession of flowers. The first spring blossomsappear in April; great stretches are covered with Pentstem-ons, Cypripediums, and many others in May and June; thenfollow tall, herbaceous Phloxes, Lilies, and Asclepiads, butperhaps the most characteristic flora blossoms still later on,when every one wants to be in Kansas when the Sunflowersbloom. Over these prairies used to travel

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