AND HIS PLANT SCHOOL 133 



summer months. All arrangements for pollination must 

 be ready when the blossoms first open and wave their 

 bright banners, and breathe their perfume to attract the 

 bee or some other pollen-carrier, for no trace of pollen car- 

 ried otherwise than by the master must be on the flower 

 before the pollen be selected and applied to it. The work, 

 therefore, demands careful preparation and haste. 



In gathering the golden dust from Opuntia's blossoms 

 and placing it upon the stigmas of the other cactus flowers, 

 the teacher's fingers were often pierced by the sharp needles, 

 and the tiny ones sometimes worked their way into the 

 flesh, causing great pain. Every step in combining the 

 thousands of plants must be carefully guarded. Only 

 skilled workmen could aid in this, so the master endured 

 the ordeal year after year, during all the time he was train- 

 ing the cactus child. 



Most of the baby cacti grown from the seeds thus fertil- 

 ized showed great stubbornness in their old habits of growing 

 thorns and needles. Thousands showed no improvement. 

 Some were even more defiant, bearing uglier thorns and more 

 of them. A small number showed a great change by pro- 

 ducing fewer spines or needles. These were placed by them- 

 selves. They alone had obeyed the master's instructions 

 and would be allowed to go on to still higher advancement. 



Year after year, for nearly ten years, this selection went 

 on; sometimes only one out of ten thousand was saved. 

 At last there were seven or eight of all the thousands which 



