The Coconino sun., 1915-08-06
FOREST SERVICE EXPERTS INVESTIGATING CAUSE 0f
 STOCK LOSSES

Mention is made in the Bible of a herd of swine which became posses sed of the devil," and stampeded off a cliff into the sea. If the same thing should occur today, the owner of those would go right home and write let ter to the Department of Agriculture asking for the Latin name of the par ticular kind of devil responsible for the loss of his livestock. And no doubt the Department would be able to tell him, and give directions for treatment. That is what the Depart ment is for.
 However, some of the devils posses sing livestock on the western ranges are pretty hard to find, according to the grazing specialists of the U. S. Forest Service who are trying to diagnose and eliminate sources of loss among livestock grazing in the Ma tional Forests. Most of the forest ranges are comparatively safe for livestock, but there are mysterious ex- captions. A typical case is in the Carson Forest in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico where on certain par ticular spot heavy losses of sheep have occurred annually for years. It is undesirable to entirely exclude Shaa, frn,,, th;c fDr ha that it lies on natural driveway or passway used by sheep in entering the Forest. All the surrounding for est ranges are of excellent quality and entirely immune from the trouble but wherever sheep are driven across this particular spot, they "just up and die," to use the vernacular of the hills. Why? That is what nobody knows, but what the Forest Service specialists are engaged in finding out.
 Local sheepmen tend to the opinion that the sheep die of mineral poison in the soil. This soil is of a peculiar blue color and sheep have been ob- served to lick it as if it were salty. Accordingly Forest Officers have gathered samples of the soil and sub- mitted them to government chemists for analysis. The chemists were un- able to find anything extraordinary except minute trace of arsenic; too little to act as poison.
 The second maneuver will consist in attacking the problem from an en- tirely different angle. An expert bot anist will be sent to the poison area to make a minute reconnaissance of all the plants growing on it and to collect samples of all species whose chemical composition is not we'll known. These samples will be sent to the laboratories of the Bureau of Plant Industry in Washington for thorough chemical and mechanical an- alysis. Possibly some innocent look ing and hitherto unsuspected herb will be found which in some stage of it's development contains poisonous sub- stance, or acts as host for some plant parasite or fungus which is poison ous. At the same time stomachs of poisoned shep will be obtained and analysed. If this plan of attack fails of results, an attempt will be made to find out whether the minute quantity of arsenic which has been found in the soil may collect or concentrate in certain places in sufficient quantities to cause trouble. In any event, Forest Officers state they are determined to get at the bottom of the trouble and then find remedy.
 The Forest Service is trying to solve other similar problems in other parts of the National Forests of Ari- zona and New Mexico. In a part of the Chiricahua Forest in southern Arizona, cattle have been dying in the spring of each year for a reason which remains wrapped in mystery. In part of the Prescott Forest in central Arizona, similar situation is being attacked by chemical analyses of certain range plants. On the Can jilon District of the Carson Forest in northern New Mexico is certain spring which mysteriously poisons cattle at certain known intervals. Just what causes the trouble in these cases is not yet known,
 Other more generally prevalent problems have already been partially solved. It has been found that areas infested with loco-weed can be grazed with negligible danger during seasons affording an abundance of other green forage. The actual nature of the poi son in loco has, however, never been determined. A remedy has been found for the noiSonouS death-cama which