26 THE KECPOKT OF THE No. 30 



closely-grazed range, their food consisting of the small tender grass shoots which 

 continue to come up although the grass is persistently eaten down by stock. This 

 young grass comes up throughout the spring and summer and early fall, except 

 during the hottest weather in July and August, in the same manner that lawn 

 grass continues to grow on a lawn which is kept mown. As soon as the intense 

 heat comes about July 1st, the young shoots of grass cease to appear and in a few 

 days all the young green blades are eaten up by the grasshoppers and the range 

 changes suddenly from a green colour to a dead brown and not a particle of green 

 feed is left. The cattle which have been on this open range since they were turned 

 out of the feed-yards and winter ranges in the spring, disappear into the timber 

 for the first time and search out the wild hay in the small natural meadows in the 

 timber. 



The majority of the grasshoppers whose natural habitat is the open range, 

 spread into the tirriber, or into any growing crop or fenced pasture where there 

 is standing grass or vegetation of any kind. The reason for this is that, after 

 they have cut off all standing grass on the open ranges and the grass particles 

 being left lying loose upon the ground, they were unable to feed upon it as it 

 slips away from them when they try to bite it. The range often presents an 

 appearance as though a miniature mowing machine had been over it when examined 

 two or three days after a hot spell has set in and checked further growth. Until 

 this time of drought the tall tough flowering stalks are seldom touched by the 

 grasshoppers, but the tiny tender new shoots coming up around the base of the 

 plant form the chief food. They are attacked from the tip when less than VA inches 

 high and are eaten down to the ground, there being no waste. Any grass blades 

 from two to six inches in height which have escaped the grasshoppers and the 

 coarse flowering stalks, are only attacked when drought causes the supply of tender 

 shoots to fail. This grass is gnawed off about one inch from the ground and 

 forms the material seen on the ground a few days after drought sets in, as de- 

 scribed above. 



Where cattle are allowed, as on the Eiske Creek range, to remain out on the 

 open grass land from the time the snow goes in the spring until it becomes deep 

 again in the fall, the grass has very little chance to seed as the flowering heads 

 are eagerly sought after hy cattle, particularly by horses and sheep. It is believed 

 that the part played by grasshoppers in causing the disappearance of the Bunch- 

 grass from range so grazed may be considered slight indeed. That they help very 

 materially to keep it in a depleted condition cannot be doubted. 



The feeding of the cattle and horses, by killing out the Bunch-grass and causing 

 the range to be thinly clothed by low growing grasses, opened the range to the 

 full glare of the sun and creates an ideal habitat for the species which are the most 

 injurious in British Columbia. With the disappearance of the Bunch-grass, these 

 injurious species, probably rare hitherto, doubtless increased rapidly in numbers 

 while the species adapted to the Bunch-grass type of land are to-day practically 

 extinct on the upper ranges, and are only met with among the Bunch-grass of the 

 winter ranges. The species whose natural habitat is among the Bunch-grass, have 

 seldom been known to increase sufficiently to cause injury, so that the Bunch-grass 

 does not suffer much damage from its natural inhabitants, the damage being done 

 during periods of drought, by tbe migration of the injurious species, which are 

 present in great numbers on the depleted range immediately outside the winter 

 range fences. 



