i886.] Scott on the Birds of Arizo?ia. 2^3 



Wherever the phiin is broken up into small hills, at the begin- 

 ning of the larger mountains beyond, and sometimes reaching 

 ^vell into the plain itself, the giant cactus is abundant, and 

 though it is quite as common in the most arid country, yet it 

 seems to flourish equally near the streams. The groves of this 

 form of cactus are sometimes of vast extent, and such a one exists 

 just east of the Military Reservation of Camp Lowell. Here the 

 cacti attain wonderful size, many being between twenty-five and 

 forty feet high, and are very close together, the outstretched arms 

 of one not unfrequently almost touching its neighbors. They 

 are of the most wierd shapes, varying from a single straight shaft 

 to a most complicated system of branches or arms, reaching in 

 every conceivable direction. The many trunks and arms are 

 from ten inches to three feet in thickness, and have parallel rows 

 of the sharpest spines protecting them, yet the soft fibre of 

 which these colossal cacti are formed is often riddled by the 

 Woodpeckers, and the holes thus made serve afterward, in other 

 seasons, as admirable nesting places for several kinds of Owls 

 and Flycatchers of the genus Myiarchus. Two other forms of 

 plant-life, very characteristic of the I'egion, are generally found in 

 the same region as this giant cereus. One is the palo-verde, a 

 peculiar tree, deserving its name from the intense green of the 

 entire bark from the ground upward, and bearing leaves so small 

 that the tree presents an appearance little varied during the year, 

 save in the spring when it blooms with myriads of minute 

 yellow flowers, that give the appearance of a tree of gold. These 

 trees vary in size from small shrubs to trees of twenty-five feet in 

 height, and are found most abundantly, perhaps, on the first mesas 

 of the foothills, and at other similar altitudes. The other form 

 spoken of is the ocotilla, a large kind of Eiiphorbia^ bearing in 

 the spring and early summer from the extremity of each of its 

 branches a cluster of vivid scarlet flowers. There is no trunk or 

 body proper to this shrub, wliich frequentlv attains a height of 

 fifteen to twenty feet, but the arms or branches start close to the 

 ground from the root stalk, at an angle of about 45°, and rarely 

 send oft' any smaller branches. 



All of these forms of vegetable life, save the cacti and ocotillas, 

 atford sustenance to great bunches of .mistletoe — of course ever- 

 green — the fruit of which forms the favorite food of many kinds of 

 birds, and in its deep, tangled masses numberless bird houses are 



