STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 285 



animal life that tbe}^ were returned to the valleys when the snow com- 

 pelled their removal, in the best of condition. 



A particular flock of morinoes, numbering five thousand, Avhich were 

 being tended on a share of the increase, by two intelligent young men, 

 were driven from the Coast liange to the Sierra Nevada, and pastured 

 through the summer, and again taken to the coast at the approach of 

 winter. This lot of sheep were culls out of a flock of forty tliousand, 

 and not a good average lot, many of them being sickly. Going away 

 inferior, they came back superior to any five thousand which could be 

 selected from those which had been summered in the valley. Their 

 improvement over the flock remaining through the summer on the 

 plains was doubtless owing more to a change of diet than climate, as 

 none can be more equable and favorable to the health of sheep than the 

 coast districts. 



Added to the nutritious grasses was the great variety of the conifer- 

 ous tribes, with their resinous properties, to which the sheep had, at all 

 times, unrestrained access, the medicinal benefits of which were abun- 

 dantly apparent. 



There arc vast ranges in the Coast Mountains, on both sides of the 

 Sierra, where herds have not yet been grazed, to which sto(dvgrowcrs 

 would do well to drive their herds in the summer, and thus enable them 

 to save the forage of the valley for winter use, adopting thus, to some 

 extent, the custom so long in vogue in Spain, whicb alone enables her 

 sheep growers to profitably conduct this great branch of agricultural 

 industry. 



THE GREAT CENTRAL BASIN FOR SHEEP GRAZING. 



Eastward of the Sierra Nevada, and extending twelve hundred miles 

 to the Rock}- Mountains, are wide stretching deserts, narrow, fertile, 

 circuitous vallcj's, enclosed by liills and mountains, covered witb rich 

 grasses and other herbage, dividing the whole territory into a multitude 

 of natural divisions. With an average breadth of more than a thousand 

 miles, this great sheepwalk extends from our southern border on Mexico 

 to British Columbia on the north. A great deal of the soil (;onsists of 

 alkaline flats and desolate sand drifts, covered with sage brush ; but 

 there are, bordering on these, natural meadows, of coarse, wholesome 

 grasses, wdiile the hills and mountains, ever present to the view, are cov- 

 ered nearly to their rocky summits with the finest pasturage. In the 

 future this will be especially designated as the great pastoral region of 

 the American nation, not because there may be a demand in distant 

 markets for the wools which it may produce, but for the reason that the 

 mines of the precious metals, sown thicklj- in every hill and mountain, 

 will attract to this part of the continent a dense population fur their 

 development, which must find its chief supplies of food and clothing 

 from the produce of the herds grazed in their midst. Thus, in a great 

 measure, will be settled the difficult problem of transportation for these 

 nearly inaccessible regions. I'hc result of the industry of the p<)])ula- 

 tion in the great interior basin, being reduced to bullion, will place the 

 manual labor employed in all co-operative branches on an equable basis; 

 hence, as the transportation to the commercial centres of the bullion, 

 by ordinary modes of conveyance, will not be onerous, people who make 

 the production of the precious metals the basis of their collective industrj'- 

 will be more favorably situated than those engaged in that s])ecies of 

 agriculture which must seek a distant market over a costly transporta- 



