It is different in the steppes which stretch from southern Russia eastward through central Asia. I will only mention the strange salt-steppes, which in summer often glitter like newly fallen snow, from the salt which effloresces from the soil and nourishes a wholly peculiar vegetation. Yet I can not refrain from attempting a brief description of the sparingly populated but still inhabited Tartarian steppes of Pontus. These do not uniformly present a level surface, being broken by the durrinas, low tracts of bush of blackthorns, hawthorns, roses and brambles. But the remaining part of the vegetation is also divided by the inhabitants of lesser Russia, according to its use for pasture, into two essentially distinct groups, the truwa, the turf, and the burian, the rough, branching plants which, on account of their woody stem, afford no sustenance to the herds of the steppes. The feather-grass[7] is the principal among the Graminaceous plants. Directly after flowering, it expands its long, delicately feathered awns, not unlike marabout feathers, from the spike which rises high above the tuft of narrow, dry leaves. The older the steppe, the higher develops the woody root-stock above the soil, to the annoyance of the mower. Whoever travels but a few miles into the steppes soon hears the word burian. Against the burian inveighs the herdsman with his oxen and horses; over the burian laments the husbandman; the burian is the curse of the gardener and the hope of the cook. For in the soil of the steppe, which is peculiarly fertile for certain plants, which we call weeds, these shoot up to an incredible height, wherever cultivation has loosened the solid soil, which they avoid, and their peculiar use is that, dried up in the autumn, they furnish the only fuel of those regions. Above all, as in the pampas of Buenos Ayres, the thistles distinguish themselves, acquiring a size, a development, and ramification which is really marvelous. Often do they stand like little trees around the humble earth-hovels of the country people; on favorable soil, they often form extensive bush, even overtopping the horseman, who is as helpless in it as in a wood, since they intercept the sight and yet afford no trunk which might be climbed. Beside the thistle rises the wormwood, intermingled with the gigantic mullein or hightaper, the “steppe-light” of lesser Russia. Even the little milfoil grows several feet high and is not a little prized, since the inhabitants, from their poor provision, value it as the best material for fuel. But the most characteristic of all the plants of the burian is that which the Russians call “Perekatipole,” the “Leaf in the Field,” and the German colonists, almost more happily, the “Wind Witch.” A poor thistle-plant, it divides its strength in the formation of numerous dry, slender shoots, which spread out on all sides and are entangled with one another. More bitter than wormwood, the cattle will not touch it even in times of the utmost famine.