12 RANGE IMPROVEMENT IN. CENTRAL TEXAS. 
ment took it in hand it was one of the very poorest.” Another 
remarked: ‘‘ Don’t think that because every stockman in these parts 
hasn’t taken up the methods adopted here they are blind or indifferent. 
Many of them have been watching and taking notes, and are quietly 
making experiments on their own places, and | predict that the others 
will do likewise.” 
The world is slow to adopt anything new, but once let it be demon- 
strated that it pays to do so,and no people are more ready to take hold 
than are the farmers and stockmen of the United States. Hence, it is 
reasonable to believe that within a few years advanced methods of 
handling the ranges will be adopted in central Texas and throughout 
the Southwest generally, and that where one blade of grass now grows in 
a very few years several will be made togrow. The soil of these ranges 
is quite as rich in food for grasses and forage plants in 1901 as it was 
thirty years ago. The seasons are as good, in fact better, in that the 
rainfall is somewhat greater and is more satisfactorily. distributed. 
Hence the belief that after the proper methods for rejuvenating the 
ranges shall have been generally adopted, it will not be many years 
before the range capacity for sustaining live stock will be quite as 
great as it was in the sixties and seventies, when there was no better 
stock country to be found than that of central Texas. 
HISTORY OF THE FIRST YEAR’S WORK. 
SELECTION OF THE LAND. 
In March, 1899, Prof. C. C. Georgeson, of the Division of Agros- 
tology, was sent by the Agrostologist to select a section of range land 
on which it was proposed to undertake and prosecute experiments 
‘‘to demonstrate the most practicable, and at the same time the most 
economic, way of treating the natural pastures in order to again cover 
them with the native grasses or with other species from similar 
regions in other countries.” He put in several days looking over the 
many sections recommended to him for the purposes in view. Some 
of them were already fairly good ranges, but he was looking for one 
that had been run down until it was distinctly a very poor range. 
Some of them were valley lands altogether, the soils being uniformly 
rich and specially favorable for the growth, under favorable condi- 
tions, of grasses and forage plants, but he was looking for one that 
was poorer and if anything less favorable for range purposes than 
the average. He was acting on the idea that if a body of land already 
stocked with grasses, or one specially located, or specially rich in 
the matter of its soil, should be selected, no matter how successful 
might be the results of the experiments to be made, they would not 
be accepted as demonstrating the correctness of the methods adopted. 
There would be many who could say, with some reason, and would, in 
