The Hillside Farmer and the Forest. 35 



once covered with forest sponge retaining moisture and 

 soil. Those loads of lumber that pass his door were cut 

 twenty, or even thirty, miles above his ranch. A team 

 of ten or twelve mules, swung by a jerk-line, moves 

 eight, or even nine, cords of wood piled solidly on a 

 Washoe rack and back-axle. That kind of wood used 

 to bring six dollars and a half at the mine. But competi- 

 tion has lowered the price to five dollars. And when the 

 home-seeker inquires what his second-growth wood com- 

 mands he learns that four dollars is all there is " in it." 

 " In it " for whom ? Surely not for him. It is worth 

 a dollar and a quarter to cut it, — and where can the profit 

 come in when blacksmith bills are squared and feed 

 supplied to the stock, and only one trip a day can be made 

 to the mine ? 



It is the exception, therefore, when we find that a 

 rancher has gone to work in a systematic manner to clear 

 his ground by cutting the wood. In the thick litter of 

 pine needles not a blade of grass can grow — the rosin 

 is " poisonous," as the old legend has it. The timber 

 must go, to permit of the sprouting of wild feed, the 

 sowing of grain, and the fallowing of the field. The first 

 illustration shows a fair stand of second-growth sugar 

 and yellow pine of about twenty-five years' growth. The 

 wood is sleighed off and the limbs piled up preparatory 

 to burning in winter-time. The oaks are left standing to 

 furnish shade and shelter for the cattle when feeding on 

 the stubble during the summer. Pleasant hills beyond 

 now show grain-fields where conditions like those de- 

 scribed prevailed years since. This is the most favorable 

 result. 



But what if a rancher lives so far from the mine 



