The layer next above it comprises the foothill country of the Upper Sonoran Zone, which includes most of the state of New Mexico. Some of its common markers are juniper, piñon, oak of various species including live oak, mountain mahogany, mescal, yucca, beargrass, and the famous blue grama grass. It is exhibited all along the Continental Divide in the southwest part of the state but nowhere so well as in the Fort Bayard Reservation. There a tract, protected for three generations from woodcutting, fires, and intensive grazing, offers a large-scale picture of the lovely land that once was New Mexico. There the character and amount of vegetation astounds the visitor who is familiar with only the close-picked, parched aspect of the landscape that generally borders the main highways. When seen from the air, the very color of the grass-mantled earth is many shades lighter than that of the bare overgrazed ranges a few miles to the south. And the difference can be seen by anybody. The foothills are dotted, not covered, with juniper and piñon. The dwarfed, rounded little junipers (properly enough called cedars) leave the traveler unprepared to believe that they will anywhere become respectable forest trees. Yet in the Burro Mountains, the alligator-bark species, finest of them all, reaches a diameter of five feet and an age of about 1000 years. The wood has an extraordinary fragrance, and its smoke tells the neighbors for blocks around that you are warming yourself at the fireplace. Another notable thing about the wood is its resistance to decay in the earth. I have removed pieces of it from subterranean ruins of the Mimbres culture which, according to the best archaeological opinion, are some eight hundred years old. The yuccas deserve a story by themselves. One small, unimpressive species greets you on the meadows at the foot of Raton Pass; others have to be searched out along high limestone ridges where the foothills are deciding to become mountains. The one chosen for our state flower is the tall yucca (_Yucca elata_), a superb species best seen along the Continental Divide near Silver City. The genus reaches its greatest size in the grotesque Joshua tree, which never fails to attract the eye on the Mohave desert in California. The century plant has a name that always gets attention. But let us be sure we mean the same thing. Rightly, it means the mescal, the favorite food of the Mescalero Apaches. Besides these two names, it is called also maguey and, no doubt, Spanish dagger along with various other spine-tipped plants. All of which clinches the argument for a name which for all users is a certain designation for one object and only one. It is not just because botanists like to appear learned that they call this plant _Agave parryi_. That title is as descriptive as middle C for one key on the piano, and in the same way international. [Illustration: Yucca plants]