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The plants were in general different from those nearer the colony, and though they were few in number, yet they were curious. Of grasses I gathered seeds of twenty-five different kinds, six of which grew only on the alluvial bank of the Darling. Among them were a poa, and the Chloris truncata, and Stipa setacea of Mr. Brown.

THRIFT. This plant is valuable for making edgings to the flower garden. It should be parted, and planted for this purpose either in the months of August and September, or April and May. STIPA pinnata. FEATHER GRASS. We have few plants of more interest than this; its beautiful feathery bloom is but little inferior to the plumage of the celebrated Bird of Paradise.

Trailing thorns pierced her ankles; the stipa shrubs showered her with little barbs, and from another bush was detached an invisible pollen that penetrated her clothing and burned her skin. At the noon halt they made a hammock of tent cloth, in which she was carried all the afternoon by four porters.

Everywhere about them was the wiry stipa grass, and "a kind of grass with a stalk as big as a great wheaten reed, which hath a blade issuing from the top of it, on which though the cattle feed, yet it groweth every day higher, until the top be too high for an ox to reach."

The rest of the vegetation consisted of a Sedum, Nardostachys Jatamansi, Meconopsis horridula, a slender Androsace, Gnaphalium, Stipa, Salvia, Draba, Pedicularis, Potentilla or Sibbaldia, Gentiana and Erigeron alpinus of Scotland. The broad top of the hill was also of quartz, but covered with angular pebbles of the rocks transported from Kinchinjhow.

White clover, shepherd's purse, dock, plantain, and chickweed, are imported here by yaks; but the common Prunella of Europe is wild, and so is a groundsel like Senecio Jacobaea, Ranunculus, Sibbaldia, and 200 other plants. The grasses are numerous; they belong chiefly to Poa, Festuca, Stipa, and other European genera. I made frequent excursions to the great glacier of Kinchinjhow.

The numerous families of grasses have all three males, and two females, except Anthoxanthum, which gives the grateful smell to hay, and has but two males. The herbs of this order of vegetables support the countless tribes of graminivorous animals. The seeds of the smaller kinds of grasses, as of aira, poa, briza, stipa, &c. are the sustenance of many sorts of birds.