One Of This Family, `M. Turbiniforme', Is So Colored As To Blend In Well With
The Hue Of The Soil And Stones Around It; And A `Gryllus' Of The Same Color
Feeds On It.
In the case of the insect, the peculiar color is given as
compensation for the deficiency of the powers of motion to enable it to elude
the notice of birds.
The continuation of the species is here the end in view.
In the case of the plant the same device is adopted for a sort of double end,
viz., perpetuation of the plant by hiding it from animals, with the view
that ultimately its extensive appearance will sustain that race.
As this new vegetation is better adapted for sheep and goats in a dry country
than grass, the Boers supplant the latter by imitating the process
by which graminivorous antelopes have so abundantly disseminated
the seed of grasses. A few wagon-loads of mesembryanthemum plants, in seed,
are brought to a farm covered with a scanty crop of coarse grass,
and placed on a spot to which the sheep have access in the evenings.
As they eat a little every night, the seeds are dropped
over the grazing grounds in this simple way, with a regularity
which could not be matched except at the cost of an immense amount of labor.
The place becomes in the course of a few years a sheep-farm,
as these animals thrive on such herbage. As already mentioned,
some plants of this family are furnished with an additional contrivance
for withstanding droughts, viz., oblong tubers, which, buried deep enough
beneath the soil for complete protection from the scorching sun,
serve as reservoirs of sap and nutriment during those rainless periods
which recur perpetually in even the most favored spots of Africa. I have
adverted to this peculiarity as often seen in the vegetation of the Desert;
and, though rather out of place, it may be well - while noticing
a clever imitation of one process in nature by the Cape farmers -
to suggest another for their consideration. The country beyond
south lat. 18 Deg. abounds in three varieties of grape-bearing vines,
and one of these is furnished with oblong tubers every three or four inches
along the horizontal root. They resemble closely those of the asparagus.
This increase of power to withstand the effects of climate
might prove of value in the more arid parts of the Cape colony,
grapes being well known to be an excellent restorative in the debility
produced by heat: by ingrafting, or by some of those curious manipulations
which we read of in books on gardening, a variety might be secured
better adapted to the country than the foreign vines at present cultivated.
The Americans find that some of their native vines yield wines superior
to those made from the very best imported vines from France and Portugal.
What a boon a vine of the sort contemplated would have been
to a Rhenish missionary I met at a part in the west of the colony
called Ebenezer, whose children had never seen flowers, though old enough
to talk about them!
The slow pace at which we wound our way through the colony
made almost any subject interesting. The attention is attracted
to the names of different places, because they indicate
the former existence of buffaloes, elands, and elephants,
which are now to be found only hundreds of miles beyond.
A few blesbucks (`Antilope pygarga'), gnus, bluebucks (`A. cerulea'),
steinbucks, and the ostrich (`Struthio camelus'), continue, like the Bushmen,
to maintain a precarious existence when all the rest are gone.
The elephant, the most sagacious, flees the sound of fire-arms first;
the gnu and ostrich, the most wary and the most stupid, last.
The first emigrants found the Hottentots in possession of
prodigious herds of fine cattle, but no horses, asses, or camels.
The original cattle, which may still be seen in some parts of the frontier,
must have been brought south from the north-northeast, for from this point
the natives universally ascribe their original migration.
They brought cattle, sheep, goats, and dogs; why not the horse,
the delight of savage hordes? Horses thrive well in the Cape Colony
when imported. Naturalists point out certain mountain ranges
as limiting the habitat of certain classes of animals;
but there is no Cordillera in Africa to answer that purpose, there being
no visible barrier between the northeastern Arabs and the Hottentot tribes
to prevent the different hordes, as they felt their way southward,
from indulging their taste for the possession of this noble animal.
I am here led to notice an invisible barrier, more insurmountable
than mountain ranges, but which is not opposed to the southern progress
of cattle, goats, and sheep. The tsetse would prove a barrier
only until its well-defined habitat was known, but the disease
passing under the term of horse-sickness (peripneumonia) exists
in such virulence over nearly seven degrees of latitude that no precaution
would be sufficient to save these animals. The horse is so liable
to this disease, that only by great care in stabling can he be kept any where
between 20 Deg. and 27 Deg. S. during the time between December and April.
The winter, beginning in the latter month, is the only period
in which Englishmen can hunt on horseback, and they are in danger
of losing all their studs some months before December. To this disease
the horse is especially exposed, and it is almost always fatal.
One attack, however, seems to secure immunity from a second. Cattle, too,
are subject to it, but only at intervals of a few, sometimes many years;
but it never makes a clean sweep of the whole cattle of a village,
as it would do of a troop of fifty horses. This barrier, then,
seems to explain the absence of the horse among the Hottentots,
though it is not opposed to the southern migration of cattle,
sheep, and goats.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 47 of 295
Words from 47604 to 48603
of 306638
