The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

FLORA OF AEGENTIXA. 897
sucli a tangle of sharp points that they form a veritable snare, in which animals
run the risk of perishing.
The forests are not arrested abruptly on the verge of the pampas, into which
are projected wooded headlands and islands, while elsewhere grassy glades appear
amid the groves and thickets. Since the arrival of the Europeans the indigenous
herbaceous flora of the pampas has been invaded by numerous species introduced
from the Old World, which have rapidly spread from the seaboard to the foot of
the Andes. Thus several varieties of the thistle have taken possession of the
plains, where in dry seasons they grow so thickly as to be quite impenetrable.
38'
Fig. 162.—FLOEiS OF THE Plateaus A^1> Ravetes.
Scale 1 : 1,000,000.
-,-, Sc--^"-:..^ ^smpa i/e Zeis Co r/} / c e 3
|»ifiiS»iS^'^W^
65° West op Greenw'cK 64°
I IS
Miles.
K'j^:
These European species would appear to have improved the pasturage by the de-
velopment of the pasio hlando or pasto tierno, tender herbage good for sheep, with
a corresponding decrease of the pasto duro, or coarse grasses on which horses
chiefly graze.
Compared with the other vegetable zones the pampas flora comprises but a
small number of species, which, however, are remarkable for their prodigious ex-
pansion. But the gijnerium argenteum, known in Europe by the name of "pam-
pas grass," does not occur in the pampas proper, but onlj- on the slopes of the
mountains, and in the moist barrancas or bottom-lands on the Patagonian frontier.
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