J) 



'^2 FREAKS OF PLANT LIFE. 



circumference of the lower part at the top. This 

 form is very striking while the plant is still only from 

 two to six feet high, but as it grows taller the thick- 

 ness becomes more equal, and when it attains the 

 height of twenty-five feet it looks like a regular 

 pillar ; after this it begins to throw out its branches. 

 These come out at first in a globular shape, but turn 

 upward as they elongate, and then grow parallel to 

 the trunk, and at a certain distance from it, so that a 

 Cereus with many branches looks like an immense 

 candelabrum, especially as the branches are mostly 

 symmetrically arranged round the trunk, of which 

 the diameter is not usually more than a foot and a 

 half, or rarely a foot more."^ They vary much in 

 height ; some are said to be thirty-six or forty feet, 

 and others not less than sixty. " As seen rising from 

 the extreme point of a rock, where a surface of a 

 few inches square forms their sole support, one can- 

 not help wondering that the first storm does not tear 

 them from their airy elevation." " Wonderful as each 

 plant is, when regarded singly, as a grand specimen 

 of vegetable life, these solemn, silent forms which 

 stand motionless, even in a hurricane, give a some- 

 what dreary character to the landscape. Some look 

 like petrified giants, stretching out their arms in 

 speechless pain, and others stand like lonely sentinels, 



' Mollhausen's "Journey to the Pacific," ii. p. 248. 



