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has put his trust entirely in the native herbage and the natural water 

 supply and has made no provision for bad seasons by putting up hay or 

 by digging wells or making storm water tanks, the prickly pear may be 

 considered a valuable forage plant, as without it the stockman could 

 not bring his cattle through the drought alive. But in the good 

 years — and there are a great many more good years than bad ones — 

 the prickly pear takes up space that might be better filled by grasses, 

 for when there is plenty of grass, cattle do not touch the cactus, and its 

 rank growth shades and chokes out the better forage. In the lower 

 valleys, from the Guadalupe River west, this cactus forms thickets with 

 the various spiny shrubs that compose the "chaparral" — tangled copses 

 with paths winding here and there among clumps that are each year 

 becoming more impenetrable. The only grasses that thrive here are 

 shade-loving species, which, compared with those that grow in the full 

 sunlight, are unpalatable and of little feeding value. A few sprawling 

 stems of some of the better and formerly abundant grasses struggle 

 upward toward the light wherever i)rotected from extermination by the 

 sharp-spined cactus, but it may no longer be called a well-grassed coun- 

 try. From the standpoint of the botanist the prickly-pear thickets are 

 splendid collecting grounds, but from the standpoint of the ranchmen 

 the increase of cactus, rapid in good years and slow in bad ones, is 

 extremely prejudicial and withal disheartening. Scarcity of rainfall 

 does not seem to influence the prickly pear the same way as the grasses, 

 the former simply holding its own during times of scarcity and shooting 

 ahead with renewed vigor when the rainfall becomes normal, the latter 

 quickly dying to the ground. On the southern prairies the stockmen 

 have seen the change within fifteen or twenty years from open country, 

 covered knee-high with luxuriant grasses, to a tangled thicket with 

 grasses only at intervals, and the prickly pear so thick that it is hard 

 to drive cattle through it. 



How to destroy pricJcly 2)ear. — Fire is the only remedy which is always 

 effective in lighting the prickly pear, but to develop) enough grass and 

 undergrowth so that a fire will run through thickets composed of this 

 cactus requires that cattle shall be kept out of the pastures one and 

 often two years, and few stockmen are willing to sacrifice two years' 

 growth of grass even to rid themselves of the prickly pear. Mr. 

 William Benton, of ^S^ueces Count)', estimates the loss of pasturage from 

 encroachments of prickly pear within tlie last ten years at from 2.") to 35 

 per cent, year in and year out, and the present outlook is worse rather 

 than better. In otlier words, lands which have not suffered to any 

 appreciable extent in actual fertility, or in Avhat may be called the 

 potential fertility of the soil constituents, have only the capacity of 

 producing from two-thirds to three-fourths as much forage now as ten 

 years ago, although they are at present covered with a far greater 

 bulk and amount of vegetation. Many stockmen who have noted the 

 progress of this pest are of the opinion that in another twenty years 

 prickly })ear will cover a large part of the now open or fairly open 



