Vegetation oe ti-ie Sotol Country. 
121 
bayonet leaves and rifling the plant of its flower bud, leaving it 
broken and disfigured. This procedure is so common on the range 
about Langtry and the plants of Yucca treculeana are so disfigured 
— all, that is, except such as are too tall for the cattle to reach — 
that apparently the species is in a fair way to be exterminated in 
that region. Probably the sotol plants are similarly robbed of 
their young flower buds, which would seem to account for the ab- 
sence of the tall flowering stalks on easily accessible range, whereas 
on steep, rocky cliffs and unpastured corners these flower stalks 
are very conspicuous. See pi. v. The writer does not recall having 
noted a single flower stalk upon thousands of acres of close grow- 
ing sotol on the divide between Comstock and the Pecos Canyon, 
or upon the open range about Langtry. 
It was not determined whether sotol sends up a flowering shoot 
periodically or whether only once in the lifetime of the plant as 
maintained by a very competent local observer. These flowering 
buds and shoots would, like Yucca, be a source of food of much 
consequence and easily available for stock. But the resource is 
at least temporarily multiplied many fold when the sotol plant is 
cut and fed to stock. This renders available the nutritious cab- 
bage-like terminal bud which is naturally very closely covered by 
the dense tuft of saw-edged, tough leaves. Sotol cutting is a prom- 
inent part of the duties of the sheep and goat herders nowadays — 
a process very suggestive of the old custom of cutting green corn 
from the field for fall feeding of cattle and hogs. It is very 
largely practiced also for cattle feeding, not on the range merely, 
but for shipping to other points. The most striking example of 
this known to the writer is the case where a cattle feeder in Eagle 
Pass shipped to that point 100 carloads of sotol for his cattle during 
the winter of 1903-04. 
For so important an item of forage, too little is known about 
the habits and qualities of the sotol. That it is rich in nutriments 
has been demonstrated, in general by its use as a food, and as a 
source of beverage and by experience in feeding stock, but more 
quantitative determinations do not seem to have been made. Its 
habits and rate of growth are not well known. The conditions 
and frequency of flowering and other means of reproduction, the 
vitality of the plant and its capacity to sprout up after the bud has 
been cut out are matters of importance to be determined in view 
of the great drain its popularity is making upon the supplies. 
Whence came the great invasion of sotol and when it began are 
questions of much speculative interest, but not sufficient data are at 
