GENERAL ACCOUNT. 13 



The desert region, which occupies practically all of the urea between 

 the Blue Mountains and Reno, Nev., except the Warner Range and 

 the Humboldt and Truckee River bottoms, is, in popular parlance, a 

 huge sagebrush plain, broken by numerous low mountain ranges hav- 

 ing 1 little or no timber. Between these mountains are the desert sinks 

 and "sleek deserts'* previously mentioned. All except the ""sleek 

 deserts" are covered with a shrubby growth of sage, saltbushes, and 

 greasewood, which are often the only vegetation. 



As compared with the ranges of the Plains, this region generally 

 presents many striking differences. Here there is never a sod except 

 in very favorable localities along streams, where the sedges and native 

 clovers abound. The grasses are truly bunch grasses, although of 

 many botanical species, and the bunches are invariably separated by 

 intervals of a few inches to several feet. With the exception of com- 

 paratively small areas of the more fertile regions of the Big Bend and 

 the high mountains, the entire region is covered with a shrubby growth, 

 which is popularly known as sagebrush. There is a great difference 

 here in the soil texture also, it being much looser and less subject to 

 the erosive action of torrential showers. The great difference from 

 the standpoint of the stockman is the entire absence here of the buf- 

 falo grass and the blue grama, which are such important factors in 

 the make-up of the Plains vegetation. When compared with the 

 desert regions of the Southwest, we find a greater similarity, espe- 

 cially in the possession of shrubby vegetation, although this shrub- 

 bery assumes in the latter more of a thorny and spiny nature and 

 belongs to a very different class of vegetation botanically. In the 

 Southwest is found a class of glasses resembling more closely those of 

 the Plains region, namely, the gramas, which are not only closely 

 related but often identical with the species which is of such impor- 

 tance on the Plains. In regard to the soil, the southwestern stock 

 rano-es resemble more nearly those of the Plains as far as the erosive 

 action of water is concerned, although their mechanical and chemical 

 constitution may be very different. As regards the sod, the region in 

 question closely resembles the Southwest, although the latter resem- 

 bles the Plains region in the species of grasses which it contains. 

 This fact is probably to be correlated with the meteorological con- 

 ditions mainly, the sparseness and the bunched character of the veg- 

 etation between the Rocky and the Sierra Nevada mountains being- 

 brought about more by the limited rainfall than by any other cause. 

 This view appears to be strengthened by the fact that many of the 

 grasses of this general region form a close and compact soil cover 

 when grown under the more humid conditions of the Eastern States. 

 The bunching of the grasses, therefore, is probably to be accounted 

 for by the scarcity of the water supply rather than the inherent char 

 acteristics of the grasses themselves. 



