NATIVE GRASSES OF NORTHERN MEXICO. 95 



tender aud nutritious herbage so largely maintains the flocks and 

 herds of the American farmer. 



The only attention which I have seen the Mexican ranchero 

 bestow upon grass is to inclose, rarely, a limited area of valley 

 sod, formed of hard and tough species like Sporobolus Wrightii, 

 Disticlilis mantima and Panicum obtusum, and use the field to 

 restrain a few saddle horses and work oxen. He provides scarcely 

 any store of fodder for his animals, so when the growth of 

 vegetation is arrested by the frosts of winter, they must bite 

 shorter the half dead but still nutritious herbage, and must 

 range widely to do this, and when the growths of the spring 

 months, always feeble, have been entirely checked by the wither- 

 ing droughts which reach their worst in June, they must, if they 

 can, maintain life by browsing shrubs, cactuses, etc. 



To supply the wants of the animals kept in the cities gives 

 employment during winter to many of the poorer class, who 

 hawk about the streets, in ox-carts and on the backs of donkeys, 

 bundles of dead grass gathered on far away hillsides or plains. 

 By the beginning of March the neighboring rancheros are selling 

 green wheat and barley in the same way, and they plant maize 

 from early till late to succeed these. Great stacks, freshly cut, 

 may be seen walking into town early in the morning with don- 

 key's legs, scarcely more than the feet visible a droll sight. 



The exotic grasses which accompany cereals as weeds of tillage 

 seem to be very few in northern Mexico. Of the 108 species on 

 my list, I count only three such : Panicum sanguinale, L., P. 

 Crus-galli, L., Phalarix canariemis, L. 



"Nearly all the grasses range northward from Chihuahua to a 

 greater or less extent into the United States. All my species of 

 Aristida and Stipa, and some species of Muhlenberyia, are as yet 

 undetermined. 



Paspalum Hallii, Y. & S., is confined to moist situations, as 

 the vicinity of streams and the banks of irrigating ditches. Its 



