14 THE WORLD IN WHICH WE LIVE 



Even in the desert some things grow, — it is not all 

 a rocky or sandy waste. 



Did you ever see a cactus with its thick, juicy 

 stems covered with sharp, bristling spines? That is 

 a plant of the desert. Where do you suppose its roots 

 found the water that is stored up in those thick 

 branches? Men and animals shun the desert because 

 they can find no water to drink, but this plant finds 

 it somewhere under the hot, dry sand, and stores it 

 up for future use. Indeed, animals and men lost 

 in the desert often save their lives by breaking the 

 thick stems and sucking out the water. Strange, is 

 it not, where those desert plants find that water? 



And isn't it strange, too, how the daintiest and 

 most delicate little flowers come out first in the 

 spring, when the weather is so cold and frosty that 

 the snow has hardly melted away? Such brave little 

 flowers those wood anemones and hepaticas are! Did 

 you ever pick the little starry-eyed hepatica and see 

 the stems of the flowers and of the tiny new leaves 

 all covered with soft gray fur? 



There is the trailing arbutus and those Alpine 

 flowers which blossom just at the edge of the melting 

 ice on the tops of the high mountains. Sometimes 

 these Alpine flowers are so impatient to open that the 

 buds force their way up through the thin, hard ice, 

 and do not wait for it all to melt away. Shouldn't 

 you think they would freeze? But they don't. They 

 keep alive just as the little crocuses do which come 

 up in our gardens as soon as ever there is the smallest 

 patch of green grass showing through the snow. 



The ferns are in no such hurry to come up. They 



