CONDITIONS OF THE STOCKRANGE 57 



plant becomes a ball or tuft exceedingly 

 springy underfoot, sweet as a nut in taste, 

 and equal in food value to standing oats. 



As ' one approaches the desert the land is 

 sprinkled with bushes which protect them- 

 selves from being eaten with a very strong 

 nasty taste, or deadly thorns. Of these the 

 sage brush comes first, a thousand miles wide, 

 followed by a thousand miles of greasewood 

 and acacia varied with forests of cacti. The 

 grass becomes more scanty as one forces a way 

 onward into the heart of the desert, where 

 there are regions of naked rock and belts of 

 drifting sand. 



As the annual rainfall varies from year to 

 year the desert tracts expand or shrink by 

 turns. As the winds swing from side to side, 

 or wax or wane in their supply of moisture, a 

 fertile region is made desolate for a few cen- 

 turies as Palmyra, or a desert shrinks before 

 the spreading pasture. In cycles the desert 

 blossoms or withers, but with the millions of 

 years it slowly widens. 



Such, then, were the conditions of the stock- 

 range to which the ancient herds had to adapt 

 themselves, learning to dispense with the 

 shrunken meadows, and make the most of 

 varying crops of bunch grass. 



