The parts of the colony through which we passed were of sterile aspect; and, as the present winter had been preceded by a severe drought, many farmers had lost two thirds of their stock.  The landscape was uninviting; the hills, destitute of trees, were of a dark brown color, 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 contingency 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 possesses seed-vessels which remain firmly shut on their contents while the soil 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 probability 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 (’Mesembryanthemum edule’); another possesses a tuberous root, which may be eaten raw; and all are furnished with thick, fleshy leaves, having pores capable of imbibing 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 farther north, but the great abundance of the grasses prevents them from making any show.  There, however, they stand ready to fill up any gap which may occur in the present prevailing vegetation; and should the grasses disappear, 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. 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.