My harmas, however, because of its modicum of red earth swamped by
a huge mass of stones, has received a rough first attempt at
cultivation: I am told that vines once grew here. And, in fact,
when we dig the ground before planting a few trees, we turn up,
here and there, remains of the precious stock, half carbonized by
time. The three pronged fork, therefore, the only implement of
husbandry that can penetrate such a soil as this, has entered
here; and I am sorry, for the primitive vegetation has
disappeared. No more thyme, no more lavender, no more clumps of
kermes oak, the dwarf oak that forms forests across which we step
by lengthening our stride a little. As these plants, especially
the first two, might be of use to me by offering the Bees and
Wasps a spoil to forage, I am compelled to reinstate them in the
ground whence they were driven by the fork.

What abounds without my mediation is the invaders of any soil that
is first dug up and then left for a long time to its own
resources. We have, in the first rank, the couch grass, that
execrable weed which three years of stubborn warfare have not
succeeded in exterminating. Next, in respect of number, come the
centauries, grim looking one and all, bristling with prickles or
starry halberds. They are the yellow-flowered centaury, the
mountain centaury, the star thistle and the rough centaury: the
first predominates. Here and there, amid their inextricable
confusion, stands, like a chandelier with spreading, orange
flowers for lights, the fierce Spanish oyster plant, whose spikes
are strong as nails. Above it, towers the Illyrian cotton
thistle, whose straight and solitary stalk soars to a height of
three to six feet and ends in large pink tufts. Its armor hardly