CONDITION AND PLANTS OF THE RANGE. 23 



Warner Mountains to the east of .less Valley. These conditions have 

 been taken advantage of to a detrimental extent by the immense flocks 

 of sheep which winter on the deserts to the southward and eastward 

 in Nevada and Oregon. One characteristic feature of those portions 

 of these mountains is the abundance of browse plants, which make 

 them especially attractive to the sheep grower. Sheep need a change 

 of ration in order to thrive to the best advantage, even it' that change 

 be to weedy pastures, which are ordinarily considered of little value. 

 Often they appear to be benefited by such a change from a good grass 

 pasture. This testimony of the herder is substantiated by the fact 

 that when grass is abundant the sheep will feed on such bitter plants 

 as the willow, poplar, and some of the so-called sunflowers previously 

 mentioned. In this region such shrubby plants as the gooseberry 

 {Ribes laeustre, R. htteum, R. cereum, and R. aureum), snowberry 

 (Symphoricarpos oreopkikts), willow, poplar, mountain ash (Pynts 

 s((nil>ucif<>li(i), service berry (Amelanchier aUbifolia), and Purshia 

 iridentata are very abundant. At the time of this visit immense num- 

 bers of sheep were practically subsisting on these plants. There really 

 was no grass. Even the banks of the rivulets were chopped up by 

 the incessant tramping, and the steep hillsides, protected by jagged 

 rocks, were dusty. The writer has never seen a more deplorable con- 

 dition than existed here. The sheep region was visited about the 1st 

 of August, and sheep were supposed to remain there two months 

 longer. It is difficult to imagine what the animals could find to live 

 on. On an area shown in Plate VI, figure 2, the snowberries had been 

 cropped so that there was nothing left but short, barked stumps and old, 

 woody stems. This is in the vicinity of an old corral, but photographs 

 taken in the same region show that similar conditions exist over a 

 large part of the mountains. 



The range regions traversed between the Blue Mountains, in Oregon, 

 and Reno, Nov., with the exception of the Warner Mountains, have 

 much in common. The mesa region does not differ greatly in appear- 

 ance, although the black sage of the northern part is almost entirely 

 replaced to the southward over large areas, especially in the vicinity 

 of the Black Rock and Smoke Creek deserts, as well as in the Hum- 

 boldt Valley, by the saltbushes, hop sage, bud sage, red sage, and 

 white sage. These sage plants are of much more value as winter teed 

 than the saltbushes. In this general region eight sinks were passed 

 over. Some of these had water in them in places, but for the most part 

 they were dry, the surface being smooth, showing level narrow fissures, 

 and having no vegetation. The main areas of this character seen were 

 in the Harney, Guano, and Catlow valleys, in Oregon; Surprise Valley, 

 in California; and Long Valley, Smoke Creek, Black Rock, Humboldt 

 Sink, and White Plains, in Nevada. All of these areas located in the 

 lower portion of their drainage basin have as a first distinct zone of 



