There is perhaps monotony, but there is also the interest of a well-marked individuality in that immense tract of country which includes the whole of Central Asia, and extends into Southern Europe, and which forms the region of the steppes. To the superficial observer it may seem an easy thing to characterize these steppes, but the difficulty of the task is soon felt by the careful observer. For the steppes are not so invariably uniform, so absolutely changeless as is usually supposed. They have their time of blooming and their time of withering, their summer and their winter aspects, and some variety at every season is implied in the fact that there are mountains and valleys, streams and rivers, lakes and marshes. The monotony is really due to the thousand-fold repetition of the same picture, what pleased and even charmed when first seen becoming tame by everyday familiarity. The Russian applies the word steppe, which we have borrowed from his language, to all unwooded tracts in middle latitudes, when they are of considerable extent, and bear useful vegetation. It matters not whether they be perfectly flat or gently undulating plains, highlands or mountains, whether there be patches of fat, black soil, admitting of profitable agriculture, or merely great tracts of poor soil covered with such vegetation as grows without man’s aid, and is useful only to the nomadic herdsman. This wide usage of the term is convenient, for throughout the whole region we find the same plants rising from the ground, the same types of animal life, and approximately the same phenomena of seasonal change. Unwooded the steppe-lands must be called, but they are not absolutely treeless. Neither shrubs nor trees are awanting where the beds of the streams and rivers form broad and deep valleys. In very favourable circumstances, willows, white and silver poplars, grow to be lofty trees, which may unite in a thick fringe by the river banks, or birches may establish themselves and form groves and woods, or pines may plant their feet firmly on the sand-dunes, and form small settlements, which, though not comparable to true forests, are, at least, compact little woods, like the growths along the river-banks. But, after all, such wooded spots are exceptions, they constitute to some extent a foreign element in the steppe scenery, and suggest oases in a desert.