32 BOTANICAL SURVEY OF THE C<EUR D'ALENE MOUNTAINS. 



them and keeps the ground in the heavy forest in a perpetual state of 

 twilight is also among the causes that prevent grasses from obtaining 

 a foothold. 



The settlers everywhere keep a few head of stock— horses and cattle. 

 The general range is the forest, and for reasons already stated it is 

 circumscribed in extent and the quality is poor. The areas in the 

 Cumr d'Alenes where stock raising becomes an important factor are 

 the slack-water portions of the Cumr d'Alene, St. Joseph, and St. Mary 

 valleys, the central and upper parts of the St. Mary valley, and the 

 tracts along its tributary, the Santianne. 



Except those on the central and upper St. Mary, these lands are 

 bordered by low hills, the ends of the spurs that reach down from the 

 high divides. A great deal of the forest which grows on them is com- 

 posed of the yellow pine, and is open and park-like in character. There 

 is always a sparse growth of grass in those localities. Much of the 

 low hilly country along the lower St. Mary and St. Joseph is composed 

 of basaltic outflows. The timber here in many places is thin and 

 scattered and a heavier stand of grass is found. The slopes facing the 

 south are more open than those with any other exposure and have 

 more grass land. They are also rockier and with a much thinner soil, 

 generally steeper as well. In the spring and early summer the grass 

 on these slopes furnishes a fair pasturage; in the middle of the sum- 

 mer and later the herbage dries up and stock refuse to eat it uuless 

 pressed by extreme hunger. Owing to the limited extent of the range 

 and the absolute necessity of keeping the meadows free from grazing 

 that they may furnish hay for winter feed, each settler can at the best 

 have but a small amount of stock. All the grasses that furnish pas- 

 turage on these hillsides and in the forest are easily eaten out, even 

 more so than is the case on the plains areas of Washington and Oregon. 

 The grazing grounds at low elevations are everywhere showing the 

 effects of overpasturage, notwithstanding the number of animals 

 ranging on them is small and they have been utilized but a compara- 

 tively short time. During the past ten years thousands of acres of 

 these hillsides, which I once saw covered with a good stand of grass, 

 have been so thoroughly eaten out that now they produce nothing but 

 a few coarse weeds. 



The tracts mentioned above are all within the limits of the yellow- 

 pine forest. As we proceed up the valleys we come into regions cov- 

 ered with the white pine ( Pinus monticola). The pasturage now becomes 

 exceedingly scanty. The range is the forest, as before, but no more 

 open hillsides are to be found. Stock must resort to the densely 

 timbered areas, and the pasturage becomes everything that grows 

 excepting the conifers and the bear grass {XerophyUum douglasii). A 

 common undershrub in these white pine forests, which is often eaten by 

 stock under stress of hunger, is the holly-leaved buck brush ( Pachystima 

 myrsinitex), an evergreen plant belonging to the staff-tree family. 



