POISONOUS PLANTS 247 



choose they will generally leave the injurious plants 

 alone, excepting possibly the lupines. This, however, 

 seems due more to a possibility that the injurious plants 

 are not so palatable as others. So long as the animal is 

 not too hungry it will content itself with selections from 

 the best, but when hungry and on an over-grazed range, 

 it seems to turn to the injurious plants as second choice, 

 eating them with apparent relish. 



To prove this it is only necessary to point to the 

 experience of almost every sheepman in the West who 

 has had losses from injurious plants. In a large number 

 of cases the poisoned animals have either been driven 

 through a section where feed was scarce or hurried on 

 long, hard drives and then allowed to graze a range 

 containing inferior feed and plentiful poisonous plants. 

 Under such conditions the ability of the animals to 

 distinguish between the good and bad either by sight 

 or smell seems to be at fault, or else is disregarded 

 because of hunger. 



Another frequent cause of losses is when sheep, hav- 

 ing been shipped on the cars, are unloaded and driven 

 out on a strange range for feed or water. Whether they 

 are unusually hungry or not used to the range, if there 

 are any poisonous plants on it losses are certain to 

 follow. Some plants like death camas are so similar 

 to grass in their earlier growth that stock cannot dis- 

 tinguish them from grass and are eaten unknowingly. 



It is therefore safe to presume that taste and smell 

 and possibly sight have comparatively little to do with 

 animals avoiding poisonous plants. If it is due to any- 

 thing it is to that indefinable sense in animals called 

 instinct. 



Under ordinary conditions sheep will not touch the 



