34: THE PARLOR GARfiENER. 



coal ; it would make an enormous mass of it. 

 Do you imagine that the tree could have drawn 

 this mass of carbon from the soil where it grew, 

 which does not contain a particle of carbon in its 

 composition ? No, it drew this material from the 

 atmosphere, by decomposing the air with its 

 leaves. That is what our pretty little dwarf suc- 

 culent plants do ; and without this faculty, which 

 they possess in a very high degree, they would not 



live. 



Cactus Opuntias. 



Consider first those which belong to the numer- 

 ous and strange family of the cactuses ; all of 

 them natives of the warmest parts of America. 

 See the opuntias, whose leaf-stems, or stem- 

 leaves, whichever you please to call them, have 

 the form of so many battledoors placed alongside 

 of each other. These little plants represent to 

 you in miniature those on which, in Mexico and 

 in the Island of Madeira, lives the insect called 

 cochineal, that furnishes to dyers and painters 

 their finest red, under the name of carmine ; from 

 which also, by the by, is made that rouge which 

 occasionally serves in giving color to the com- 



