82 NATIVE GRASSES OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE. 



These estimates can only be approximate for that time. The 

 first three are quite tall, and make the main bulk of hay in the 

 wild regions referred to. 



I have taken the following from General Alvord's Bulletin, as 

 quoted in the Agricultural Grasses of the United States, by Dr. 

 G. Vasey: 



" In the arid Rocky Mountain plateaus, the grasses, as they 

 stand on the soil, are cured in the sun during the summer, the 

 action of heat retaining and concentrating in the stalks the 

 sugar, gluten and other constituents of which they are com- 

 posed. It is so cold and so dry in those elevations that there are 

 neither heat nor moisture to rot them. And the snows are so 

 fine (save in some exceptional seasons) in that cold atmosphere, 

 that they are so blown by the winds into drifts, that four-fifths 

 of the soil is never covered by them. 



" The difficulties in lower altitudes than those I have described, 

 have been, that after a. warm spell and a thaw, the snow freezes 

 to a crust and the grass is matted down by the ice, and kept from 

 the stock. 



" In Texas the grazing grounds are mostly at so low a level 

 above the sea that the grasses rot in winter. Hence, in the lat- 

 ter part of winter, the animals there are often poor. The region 

 higher than 3,000 feet above the sea, fit for winter grazing, 

 includes nearly all up to the timber line, of Montana, Idaho, 

 Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico, and five- 

 sixths of Arizona, one-half of Dakota, one-third of Nebraska, 

 one-fifth of Kansas, one-fourth of Texas, and one-sixth each of 

 California, Oregon and Washington Territory. This embraces 

 about one-fourth of the area of the whole United States.*' 



The Native Grasses of the Pacific Slope. The following 

 are free extracts from the notes of C. G. Pringle, taken in 1881 : 



One going into the Southwest from New England, where all 



