962 SHEEP INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES 



prowling domestic dog is also a nuisance every where, but most so where 

 land is subdivided among small holders. The increase of these preda- 

 tory animals is assisted by the continual extension of chaparral and 

 young forest growth down from the hills and mountains into the val- 

 leys. The State gives a bounty of $5 a head for killing the coyote, 

 which is increased to $25 by local associations in some portions of this 

 district. Still the pest seems to increase, as does the injury it inflicts 

 upon flock-owners from year to year, until within this entire district 

 (the best for wool-growing within the State) 50 per cent increase on the 

 ewes bred is the highest estimate on a general average, and in some 

 localities it is much less than that.* 



Many of the wool growers in this portion of the State own the 

 mountain or hill land they range their sheep on, and in some cases 

 they use fire upon their own lands in order to check the increase of the 

 brushwood growth and burn out the predatory animals. But this is 

 done with great care to prevent the spread of the fire. It is in the 

 northern portion of this district that the most valuable full staple 

 wools of California, called u California northern" in market reports, are 

 produced, and the summer feed in their production is largely the leaves 

 and young shoots of aromatic brushwoods on the mountains, which 

 even the summer ranging of the sheep does not prevent from slowly 

 spreading downward to lands which were clear of timber and brush 

 forty years ago. This land was then kept clear by the frequent run- 

 ning of fires in the grass, which dried into hay where it grew. This 

 was once an important agency of the natives, who by the aid of circles 

 of fires were enabled to kill large game at close range with the bow 

 and arrow, and capture immense numbers of grasshoppers, which they 

 used for food. This use of fire, of course, stopped whenever and wher- 

 ever the grazing stock of the white man ate the grass while it was 

 green. The same causes are operative all along the foothills of the 

 Sierras. On the western slopes of these mountains, from thirty to; 

 forty years ago, wherever a stream debouched to the plain, mining was 

 carried on; the timber was cut off for use from a varying width of 5 

 to 10 miles. Grazing began with mining and has continued ever since. 

 Yet in that period a jungle of brushwood and young timber has grown 

 up where large timber growth then stood, and is now a dense cover 

 and breeding ground for the coyote, cougar, and wildcat, into which 

 flock-owners would not think of turning sheep. Roads are cut through 

 this undergrowth to reach the timber belt above for fuel and lumber, 

 and through these the flock-owners pass their flocks to reach the sum- 

 mer grazing lands of the Sierras above and beyond the timber belts of 

 the range. It is from the debris of lumbering operations there carried 

 on that the fires most destructive to forests have in recent years gen- 

 erally emanated. From these thickets grown on the timber tracts cut 



*The State treasurer has settled with the counties for nine months' claim under 

 the scalp law by the payment of $102,000, 



