CHAPTER XXVII
NATURAL HISTORY
THE intense heat and dryness, with the resulting great evaporation, combined with the almost total absence of rain, and the cutting action of the sand, when driven by the furious desert gales, makes the existence of vegetation in the desert almost an impossibility.
Still here and there a few blades of grass, or even a green bush or two, are to be met with, though one may travel for several days’ journey in any direction from them before any other growing plants are to be seen.
The plants that grow in the desert are all especially adapted by nature to withstand the heat and drought. The stems of the bushes have a dense outer covering to prevent evaporation. Their leaves are small and leathery for the same reason. But their chief peculiarity is perhaps the extraordinary development of their roots, which stretch for enormous distances in search of water.
Some of the wild plants I collected in Dakhla Oasis were found growing on very saline ground—in a few cases the soil around them being white, with the salt lying on the surface. The date palm seems to have been specially designed by nature to flourish under desert conditions. A palm will grow in soils containing as much as four per cent of salt, providing its roots can reach a stratum containing less than one per cent, and, if it can find a layer with a half per cent of salt only, it is capable of yielding an abundant crop.
The animals in the oasis are no less interesting than the plants.
The nights in Dakhla—especially at Rashida and Mut—are made hideous by the dismal howling of the jackals. The dog tribe in the oasis are probably unusually interesting. I collected a number of skins, but, when I went off into the desert, was unable to take them with me, and had to leave them behind in a half-cured state in Mut. Insects swarm in the hot weather, with the result that, by the time I returned from my various desert trips, I invariably found that they had got at my skins to such an extent as to render them worthless to any museum.
One jackal skin that I managed to bring in in a fair state, and gave to the Natural History Museum in Kensington, was most kindly identified for me by Mr. Martin A. C. Hinton as being identical with the large Egyptian jackal, or “wolf,” canis lupaster. All the jackals of Dakhla are of an unusually large size, and are locally called wolves. I was told that they breed freely with the village dogs. In addition to the jackals, foxes are extremely numerous, some being apparently identical with the common greyish fox of the Nile Valley.