] 5 *'^® what and the why of desert country 



other plants they flourish whether there has been less rain 

 or more than usual. 



Those plants which have substantial root systems but 

 nevertheless do not reach so deep are more exuberant 

 some years than others. Thus the Encelia, or brittlebush, 

 which, in normal years, literally covers many slopes with 

 thousands of yellow, daisy-like flowers, demands a normal 

 year. Though I have never seen it fail, I am told that in 

 very dry years it comes into leaf but does not flower, while 

 in really catastrophic droughts it does not come up at all, 

 as the roots lie dormant and hope for better times. Even 

 the creosote bush, which never fails, can, nevertheless, 

 profit from surface water, and when it gets the benefit of 

 a few thunderstorms in late July or August, it will flower 

 and fruit a second time so that the expanse which is now 

 all green will be again sprinkled with yellow. 



On such a day as this even the lizards, so I have noticed, 

 hug the thin shade of the bushes. If I venture out, the 

 zebratails scurry indignantly away, the boldly banded ap- 

 pendages which give them their name curved high over 

 their backs. But I don't venture out very often during the 

 middle of the day. It is more pleasant to sit inside where 

 a cooler keeps the house at a pleasant eighty degrees. And 

 if you think that an advocate of the simple life should not 

 succumb to a cooler, it is you rather than I who is incon- 

 sistent. Even Thoreau had a fire in his cottage at Walden 

 and it is no more effete to cool oneseK in a hot climate 

 than it is to get warm before a stove in a cold one. The 

 gadget involved is newer, but that is all. 



In this country "inclemency" means heat. One is "sun- 

 bound" instead of snowbound and I have often noticed 



