244 TEXAS AND ARIZONA 



grow to a more considerable size. To his mind 

 numberless problems would be suggested touch- 

 ing the methods by which plants, sturdy and 

 patient beings, adapt themselves to untoward 

 circumstances and keep themselves alive so 

 perpetuating the race upon the chariest of 

 encouragement. He would understand the sig- 

 nificance of the prevailing hairiness of desert- 

 inhabiting species, as well as of the all but uni- 

 versal light bluish or dusty color of the foliage ; 

 for, saving the yellow-green creosote, there is 

 hardly so much as a bright green leaf from one 

 end of the desert to the other. 



The state of my own unphilosophic mind is 

 peculiar, like the circumstances in which it finds 

 itself. It is (or perhaps it would be more honest 

 to say, it ought to be) humiliating, but it has 

 something of the charm of novelty. 



I spoke a month ago of my ornithological pre- 

 dicament when, newly arrived in Texas, I found 

 myself surrounded by a quite strange set of 

 birds. I was back in the primer, I think I said. 

 Well, botanically, here in Tucson, I have retro- 

 graded a long step farther even than that. If I 

 may say so, my state is pre-primeric. I am not 

 even a primary scholar. I am no scholar at all. 

 My condition is what it was in childhood, when 

 I had never heard of botany. In those days, in 



