proved to have been ill-founded since the introduction of the Eucalyptus
globulus; for this noble tree attains to an extraordinary height on the
pampas, and exhibits there a luxuriance of foliage never seen in
Australia.

To this level area--my "parish of Selborne," or, at all events, a goodly
portion of it--with the sea on one hand, and on the other the
practically infinite expanse of grassy desert--another sea, not "in vast
fluctuations fixed," but in comparative calm--I should like to conduct
the reader in imagination: a country all the easier to be imagined on
account of the absence of mountains, woods, lakes, and rivers. There is,
indeed, little to be imagined--not even a sense of vastness; and Darwin,
touching on this point, in the _Journal of a Naturalist,_ aptly
says:--"At sea, a person's eye being six feet above the surface of the
water, his horizon is two miles and four-fifths distant. In like manner,
the more level the plain, the more nearly does the horizon approach
within these narrow limits; and this, in my opinion, entirely destroys
the grandeur which one would have imagined that a vast plain would have
possessed."

I remember my first experience of a hill, after having been always shut
within "these narrow limits." It was one of the range of sierras near
Cape Corrientes, and not above eight hundred feet high; yet, when I had
gained the summit, I was amazed at the vastness of the earth, as it
appeared to me from that modest elevation. Persons born and bred on the
pampas, when they first visit a mountainous district, frequently
experience a sensation as of "a ball in the throat" which seems to
prevent free respiration.

In most places the rich, dry soil is occupied by a coarse grass, three