As we rode on, the Argan forest grew thinner, the trees were gradually intermixed with other species, amongst which we noted a few specimens of _Callitris quadrivalvis_—the _Arar_ of the Moors—and before long we gained, from the brow of a low hill where the forest ceased altogether, a rather wide view over a country not altogether unlike some parts of England. The hills of the province of Haha rise in successive undulations as they recede from the coast in sloping downs, relieved at intervals by clumps of trees, and elsewhere broken by masses of low shrubs. The calcareous rock, which seems never far from the surface, is thinly covered over with red earth; and patches of cultivation, chiefly barley or wheat, the former now nearly ripe, here and there indicated the presence of man somewhere within reach, but seemed to show that he plays a subordinate part in fashioning the appearance of the country. The prevailing bush or small tree is _Zizyphus Lotus_, whose double sets of thorns—one pointing forward and the other curved back—were destined to plague us throughout all the low country of South Marocco. The _Zizyphus_ was often quite covered over by climbing plants, that rise ten or twelve feet from the ground. The most frequent of these, an _Ephedra_ and an _Asparagus_, do not appear to require any special organs of attachment. Probably the intricate branches and complex spines of the _Zizyphus_ render these superfluous. Soon after this we first met bushes of one of the peculiar plants of South Marocco, then little known, and of which we were not able to learn much by personal inspection. The _Acacia gummifera_ of Willdenow is one of a group of allied species of which the remainder inhabit Upper Egypt and Nubia, while one, at least, is widely spread throughout Eastern Africa and Arabia. The tasteless gum known as the gum-arabic of commerce is probably produced by several of these species. Like its allies, the South Marocco plant flowers late in the year, after the first autumn rains, and ripens its pods during the winter. Hence, as seen by us in spring, without flower or fruit, there was little to distinguish this from several of the other forms of this group.[2] Among herbaceous plants that attracted our notice was _Glaucium corniculatum_ (here always orange, and never crimson as it is in Palestine), with _Campanula dichotoma_, only just coming into flower, whilst two or three degrees farther north, in Palestine and Syria, it usually flowers three weeks earlier. More interesting, as being one of the few local plants common to South Marocco and the Canary Islands, was the _Linaria sagittata_ (_Antirrhinum sagittatum_ of Poiret), very unlike any other toadflax in the form of its leaves and its much branched twining stems that spread far and wide over the low bushes.