CHANGE OF VEGETATION ON SOUTH TEXAS PRAIRIES. 5 



The botanical explorers who have associated the South Texas 

 region with the deserts farther to the west because they found it 

 occupied by the same desert types of vegetation must revise their con- 

 clusions in the light of facts already accomplished and of others not 

 long to be delayed. The mesquites, cacti, chaparral, and sagebrush are 

 only an episode of the bionomic history of the region, not its original 

 or normal condition or an index of its agricultural possibilities. They 

 are merely the forerunners of the larger forest growth. If reforesta- 

 tion were to continue uninterrupted by fires or other forms of human 

 interference the Gulf plains of Texas would again become covered 

 with dense subtropical forests, and with the then impeded drainage 

 would form vast swamps, such as doubtless existed before the advent 

 of agricultural man, as shown by the now isolated remnants of the 

 earlier forests.'' 



The primitive Indian agriculture which accomplished the devasta- 

 tion of this region as of many others in Mexico and Central America 

 was here, as elewhere, a self-limiting process. Lands once cleared and 

 abandoned were kept by the fires from becoming reforested until the 

 forests were all gone. That age of primitive agriculture ended in an 

 age of grass and prairie fires, of wandering buffaloes, and nomadic 

 hunters. 



European settlers brought in the age of cattle, of diminishing 

 quantities of grass, of weaker fires and advancing bushes, the pioneers 

 of a new conquest by the forests. But the forests and swamps will not 

 be permitted to return, for south Texas is being plowed and planted. 

 A new chapter in the history of agricultural development is being- 

 opened. The age of farms, wells, canals, and railroads is at hand. 

 Towns and cities are springing up, confident of a future of prosperity 

 based on the immense fertility of this most recent extension of the 

 already vast agricultural empire of Texas. 



Though the long summer seasons are more truly tropical than many 

 regions which lie within the Torrid Zone, it should not be supposed 

 that south Texas is hotter in the summer or less comfortable to live 

 in than the other parts of the State. The daily breezes from the Gulf 

 moderate the extremes of heat and humidity often encountered farther 

 north. 



The climate of the southern coast belt also differs notably from that 

 of the drier interior behind it, where true desert conditions prevail, 

 suited to the date palm, like parts of Arizona and southern Cali- 

 fornia. Date palms thrive and ripen their fruits at Laredo, Rio 



^ The Texas palmetto {Inodes texana), wMcli now seems to be closely confined 

 to the banks of the lower Rio Grande, appears to have extended formerly over 

 two hundred miles farther north. Tall palmettos were seen in Jackson County 

 as late as 1876 by Mr. J. D. Mitchell, of Victoria. 

 [Cir. 14] 



