WESTERN SNEEZE WEED AS A POISONOUS PLANT. 41 
The scythe cutting was repeated in the summers of 1919 and 1920, 
with no change in results. 
It seems clear that scythe cutting has no deleterious effect on the 
growth of the plant. . 
Effect Produced ox the Plant by Restriction of Grazing. 
Inasmuch as it is recognized that the present abundance of H. 
hoopesii on some ranges is correlated with the overgrazed condition, it 
is desirable to determine what effect would be produced by removing 
grazing animals for a period. The H. hoopesii is not particularly 
palatable to any grazing animals. Cattle very rarely eat it even when 
the range is reduced to an almost pure stand of this plant. The sheep 
eat it only after most of the desirable forage has been removed. 
Under such circumstances the H. hoopesii, which is a rank-growing 
plant, takes almost complete possession of the range. If the grazing 
animals were removed and the range allowed to reseed itself, it might 
be possible that by the growth of grasses and weeds the H. 
hoopesii would be gradually diminished in abundance. In order to 
test this possibility, a locality was selected on an evidently overgrazed 
range where the H. hoopesii was very abundant, and about one-fourth 
of an acre was fenced off, the plan being to keep it under obser- 
vation for a term of years. This area was on a very heavily grazed 
cattle range on which little remained except the H. lioopesii, and that 
was very abundant. 
The land was fenced off on September 16 and 17, 1915, and on 
September 24 half of the plot was sowed to grass seed. Timothy was 
seeded on a part of this and orchard grass on the rest. The grass seed 
was scattered broadcast and was not raked in. 
The area w r as visited on June 23, 1916. It was found that the 
fence had been broken down during the winter and the ground more 
or less trampled. There was no evidence that any of the grass seed 
which had been sowed had germinated; in fact there was more grass 
on the part of the plot which had not beensow T n than on the remainder. 
The general appearance of the tract was very much better than that 
of the ground outside of the fence. Evidently considerable grass 
had grown in the inclosure. 
On August 12, 1916, it was noted that an abundance of wild 
grasses was coming in so that the H. hoopesii at this time was more 
or less obscured. Outside the area very little grass was seen. 
vSeptember 6, 1917, practically two years after the plot was fenced 
off, another examination was made. To superficial observation the 
H. hoopesii seemed nearly as abundant within the inclosure as 
outside, but there was a good growth of wheat grass with a good 
deal of yarrow and many dandelions. Actual count of the number 
of H. hoopesii plants on measured typical areas inside and outside 
