40 WESTERN GRAZING GROUNDS AND FOREST RANGES 



great piles much like tumble weeds in the open plains 

 further north. Arroyos and washes will be filled full 

 to the top; it banks up against trees and thickets of 

 greasewood in huge windrows and in a short time disap- 

 pears with an almost magical suddenness. 



Alfileria thrives best on a decomposed granite soil, and 

 while it will grow above 3,500 feet it does not grow tall 

 enough above that altitude to be grazed by stock, cling- 

 ing very closely to the ground and forming a dense green 

 cover which furnishes but little feed. Contrary to gen- 

 eral belief the cold weather does not kill it out, as the 

 writer has seen it near Las Vegas, N. M., over 7,000 feet 

 above sea level growing year after year where the win- 

 ter temperature frequently falls to 10 or 15 below zero. 

 It has also been carried by sheep into northern states 

 Idaho, Utah and Montana but as a rule does nothing 

 more than spread over the ground in a thick close-cling- 

 ing mat of green. 



Besides this there are many weeds peculiar to the 

 region, all of which stock like, and a few are almost equal 

 to alfileria for sheep feed. By the middle of April the 

 feed begins to dry up on the desert, and the stock is 

 moved back into the foothills and mountains. 



Hundreds of thousands of sheep are grazed every 

 winter on this desert feed, and every spring the shipping 

 of lambs from this region to the eastern market reaches 

 a quarter of a million head. 



The Semi-Desert Range of the South. There is still 

 another type of desert country in this region of which the 

 San Simon Valley in southeastern Arizona is a fine sam- 

 ple. Beginning in the neighborhood of Wilcox, Ariz., 

 this range stretches east into New Mexico to a point 

 about halfway between Deming, N. M., and El Paso, 



