AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRIES 113 



Naturally, as the chief difficulty to be overcome 

 was the long soil drought of the dry season, much 

 importance was attached at first to securing plants 

 from arid and semi-arid regions. If the early Cali- 

 fornians had known more about the forage resources 

 of such regions and the ways in which grazing ani- 

 mals are maintained in them, they would have 

 expected and expended less in this line of effort for 

 practically nothing has ever been gained by introduc- 

 tion of forage plants which grew only in arid regions. 

 Quite contrary to expectation, however, a few plants 

 grown for centuries in humid regions and most hardy 

 against soil saturation or even submergence possess 

 a resistance which also serves them well in surviving 

 the opposite kind of adversity in a certain degree of 

 drought. There was disappointment that such grasses 

 did not make a good turf but under moderate drought, 

 even through a long rainless season on a soil naturally 

 retentive, they kept life in the root. They assumed 

 a bunchy habit of growth, and became coarser in 

 texture as the result of their struggle with trying 

 conditions. Though the ground-cover of bunch- 

 grasses lacks the beauty, succulence and, in some 

 respects, the value of the dense turf of the humid 

 climates, its superiority to bare or weed-laden land 

 is so marked that complaint of tussocky fields is 

 silenced. So long as the bunch maintains its central 

 inclosed life and verdure and will start freely into 

 growth whenever intermittent moisture penetrates 

 to its roots, the arid land stockman feels that he has 

 perennial pasture, and has escaped the danger of 



