_Need of an improvement in range cattle._--Ever since the earliest days of cattle-ranching in the West, stockmen have had it in their power to produce a breed which would equal in beef-bearing qualities the best breeds to be found upon the plains, and be so much better calculated to survive the hardships of winter, that their annual losses would have been very greatly reduced. Whenever there is an unusually severe winter, such as comes about three times in every decade, if not even oftener, range cattle perish by thousands. It is an absolute impossibility for every ranchman who owns several thousand, or even several hundred, head of cattle to provide hay for them, even during the severest portion of the winter season, and consequently the cattle must depend wholly upon their own resources. When the winter is reasonably mild, and the snows never very deep, nor lying too long at a time on the ground, the cattle live through the winter with very satisfactory success. Thanks to the wind, it usually happens that the falling snow is blown off the ridges as fast as it falls, leaving the grass sufficiently uncovered for the cattle to feed upon it. If the snow-fall is universal, but not more than a few inches in depth, the cattle paw through it here and there, and eke out a subsistence, on quarter rations it may be, until a friendly chinook wind sets in from the southwest and dissolves the snow as if by magic in a few hours' time. But when a deep snow comes, and lies on the ground persistently, week in and week out, when the warmth of the sun softens and moistens its surface sufficiently for a returning cold wave to freeze it into a hard crust, forming a universal wall of ice between the luckless steer and his only food, the cattle starve and freeze in immense numbers. Being totally unfitted by nature to survive such unnatural conditions, it is not strange that they succumb. Under present conditions the stockman simply stakes his cattle against the winter elements and takes his chances on the results, which are governed by circumstances wholly beyond his control. The losses of the fearful winter of 1886-'87 will probably never be forgotten by the cattlemen of the great Western grazing ground. In many portions of Montana and Wyoming the cattlemen admitted a loss of 50 per cent of their cattle, and in some localities the loss was still greater. The same conditions are liable to prevail next winter, or any succeeding winter, and we may yet see more than half the range cattle in the West perish in a single month.