INDIGENOUS AND FOREIGN NUTS AND FRUITS. 163 sion, and could be profitably grown, either for the fresh or dried fruit in Southern Kansas, Southern Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona (wherever irrigation is possible, or there is sufficient rainfall), and nearly the whole of California. There are few fruits which yield as good a return from a small expenditure of labor. The banana, plantain, pine apple, guava, and other tropical fruits, flourish in the southern counties of Texas and Southern California, though they are at rare intervals, even there, affected by frost. The papaw, our indigenous fruit of the banana family, is hardier and ripens regularly in all the region south of the 40th parallel. It is worth cultivating, and might be so improved as to be a rival of the plantain. The indigenous nut-bearing trees and shrubs, the hickory-nut, butter-nut, black walnut, chestnut, beechnut, and hazel-nut, in the North; the piñon or edible nut of one of the species of pine in the region west of the Rocky Mountains, and the pecan nut, chinquepin, and filbert, which, though not indigenous, grows wild, in the South, are all capable of extensive propagation, though the chestnut only thrives on soils of a particular quality. The pecan is one of the best of our indigenous nuts, and grows on a shrub or bush of moderate height. The foreign nuts which are already partially introduced, and which are likely to prove profitable in cultivation, are: 1. The English walnut, sometimes called also the Madeira nut, a fine, stately tree, which at twelve years of growth yields a large crop annually of the very fine nuts we know as English walnuts. 2. The Italian chestnut, whose large nuts yield a nutritious flour, and one which keeps well for two years or more. In Tuscany and Lucca, there are several millions of these trees, and the flour from the chestnuts furnishes the principal, and sometimes the entire farinaceous food of many thousands of the inhabitants. This, too, is a stately tree, and proves easy of culture here, while it may be readily grafted upon our native chestnut. It is admirably adapted to the western slopes of our mountains, and will thrive luxuriously there. 3. The almond, which being a congener of the peach, thrives wherever the peach can be successfully cultivated. The soft-shell almond is not as hardy as the hard-shell, and a sharp frost is fatal to either; but in Southern California, Arizona, Southern New Mexico, and Texas, both can be, and are successfully cultivated. The pistachio nut is also on trial, and will probably prove successful. Of other fruit-bearing shrubs and trees, we may name the Japanese persimmon, lately introduced, and said to be an excellent fruit, much superior to our native species, which however has some good qualities; the carob, a legume-bearing tree, whose pods and beans are supposed to have been the husks fed to the swine, in the parable of the prodigal son; the jujube, whose pulp forms the material for the jujube paste of commerce, and the mezquite, indigenous in Texas, whose bark and root yield tannin in large quantities, whose pods furnish a nutritious food, and whose gum is almost identical with gum tragacanth. Of trees and shrubs containing large amounts of tannin or tannic acid, besides the mezquite, there are five or six species of the rhus or sumac; four at least native, and containing from eight to twenty-five per cent. of tannin, and two foreign, the Venetian and the Sicilian sumac, which contain a little more. These are both cultivated here.* The wattle, an Australian tree of the acacia family, of which there are two species-the golden and the black wattle, Acacia pycnantha and decurrens-is also a valuable tree for the tannin its bark produces. It attains its full growth in ten years, yields from twenty-four to thirty-six per cent. of tannin, and its wood is valuable for fences, for tools, and for fuel, being nearly or quite equal to hickory, for the last purpose. It grows in dry soils, and in almost rainless regions, and would be of great value for planting on the plains under the TimberCulture Act. All the species of Spirea contain a large percentage of tannin. Some of these, as the Spiraa tomentosa, or common hardhack, and Spirea alba, or white hardhack, are common weeds, and can be easily raised on the poorest lands, yielding three to five tons to the acre. The extract from this would be * We are not aware that the bark of the ailantus has ever been tested for tannin, but as it belongs to the sumac family, it is reasonable to suppose that it may be somewhat rich in that principle. If it should prove to be, its rapid growth would make it nearly as valuable as the wattles of which mention is made above. TREES AND SHRUBS CONTAINING TANNIN. 165 superior to the best bark extract. The The foreign species are of larger growth and are much cultivated as ornamental shrubs. It is doubtful whether they contain a larger proportion of tannin than the native species. New forms of industry and profitable labor in connection with farming, are constantly brought to the attention of the public, some of them valuable, others valueless; but those which have been detailed in this chapter are sufficiently numerous to satisfy any ordinary ambition; they have all been tested, and none of them, like the cultivation of the opium poppy, which has been commended by some writers, are of a character which will injure rather than benefit mankind. CHAPTER XV. STOCK-RAISINg-Cattle-heRDING, AND THE REARING Of Horses and Mules→→ We have already spoken of the vast extent of grazing lands found in this great Western Empire. What is the actual area of these lands can only be approximately estimated, since every year large districts, previously supposed to be only available. for grazing and almost worthless even for that purpose, are found to be susceptible of cultivation, and to yield immense crops when subjected to culture. There are, furthermore, many tracts which have not yet been surveyed and are really unexplored even by the Indian, or the hunter and trapper; in some, and perhaps many, of these there are beautiful valleys, narrow, yet covered with a rich and succulent herbage, which will fatten and nourish large herds of cattle. As nearly as we can estimate, there must be somewhat more than a million of square miles of these grazing lands; enough to supply the whole world with beef, mutton, leather, and wool. Most of the States and Territories have considerable tracts of grazing lands, but the stock-growing regions, par excellence, are Dakota, Montana, a part of Idaho, Eastern Washington, and Oregon, California, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Western Nebraska, Western Kansas, the Indian Territory, and Western Texas. Texas has at present larger herds of cattle than any other section, and exports live-stock and the carcasses of slaughtered beef in refrigerator steamers to Europe in large quantities; but the finest beeves sent to our Eastern markets and to Europe are those from Colorado, Western Kansas and Nebraska, Montana, Dakota, and Wyoming. The native grasses of the Rocky Mountain parks and valleys are unrivalled for their nutritive qualities, and cattle fed on them will fatten with but very little grain. When the immigrants began to pour into the Pike's Peak region in great numbers, in 1858 and 1859, many of them lost everything except their cattle, and in their despair, finding these unable to draw their loads any further, they unyoked them and turned them out into the parks and grazing lands of that region to shift for themselves, believing that they would not be able to endure the fast approaching winter. The cattle went off, and for several months nothing was seen of them. The settlers at length started out to find their bones, but to their great surprise found them not only alive, but fat and sleek from the nutritious buffalo and gamma grasses, which, though cured by the sun, retained all their sweetness and nourishment. In most of this Rocky Mountain region there is no winter shelter for cattle, and they hardly need any oftener than one STOCK-RAISING AND CATTLE-HERDING. 167 winter in ten. A few of the more prudent stockmen put up rough, cheap sheds, and cut with a mowing-machine a score or two tons of the natural grasses, against a long or cold storm; but it is so seldom that these precautions are necessary, that their fellow-stockmen laugh at them for their carefulness. Even in Montana and Dakota the pasturage grounds are so seldom visited by severe or desolating storms, that provision for them is the exception and not the rule. In Oregon and Washington somewhat greater attention is paid to the sheltering of the stock, but in California no effort is made in that direction. The aggregate amount of cattle in the Great West, at the end of 1878, was estimated by the Agricultural Department as 3,350,400 milch cows, and 12,259,000 oxen and other cattle. The estimate was below the truth, as the local statistics show, and especially in Colorado and the Territories. To this total of 15,609,400 neat cattle were to be added over three million head. in the Territories not estimated by the department. The aggregate numbers at the close of 1879 were certainly not less than 19,000,000, and this increase was probably in about the same ratio in milch cows and in oxen and other cattle. The net increase in the great herds is about forty-five per cent. a year, though occasionally, in a year of unusually severe weather, it may fall off to thirty-five or thirty-eight per cent. In Texas and in the large herding districts elsewhere, no attempt is made to obtain the milk for use or for the production of butter or cheese, dairy-farming being regarded as an entirely distinct business from stock-raising, and having no connection with it. This distinction is carried so far in Texas, that the largest stock-growers, owning from 10,000 to 50,000 head of cattle, either purchase their milk, butter and cheese, or go without it. The cattle are under the care of herders or "cow-boys," who see that they are driven to the best pasture, and where they can have a good supply of water. These cow-boys lead a lonely and hard life, being in the saddle most of the day, and lodging in small and comfortless huts at night. Once a year, there is what is called a "round up," when the vast herds of different owners, which have pastured together over the great tracts of as yet |