A DESERT FRUIT. 69 



The fruit itself, to which the plant owes its popular 

 name, is botanically a berry, though a very big one, and 

 it exhibits in a highly specialized degree the general 

 tactics of all its family. As far as their leaf-like stems 

 go, the main object in life of the cactuses is not to get 

 eaten. But when it comes to the fruit, this object in 

 life is exactly reversed ; the plant desires its fruit to be 

 devoured by some friendly bird or adapted animal, in 

 order that the hard little seeds buried in the pulp within 

 may be dispersed for germination under suitable condi- 

 tions. At the same time, true to its central idea, it 

 covers even the pear itself with deterrent and prickly 

 hairs, meant to act as a defence against useless thieves 

 or petty depredators, who would eat the soft pulp on 

 the plant as it stands (much as wasps do peaches) 

 without benefiting the species in return by dispersing its 

 seedlings. This practice is fully in accordance with the 

 general habit of tropical or sub-tropical fruits, which lay 

 themselves out to deserve the kind offices of monkeys, 

 parrots, toucans, hornbills, and other such large and 

 powerful fruit-feeders. Fruits which arrange themselves 

 for a clientele of this character have usually thick or 

 nauseous rinds, prickly husks, or other deterrent 

 integuments; but they are full within of juicy pulp, 

 embedding stony or nutlike seeds, which pass undigested 

 through the gizzards of their swallowers. 



For a similar reason, the actual prickly pears them- 

 selves are attractively coloured. I need hardly point 

 out, I suppose, at the present time of day, that such 

 tints in the vegetable world act like the gaudy posters of 

 our London advertisers. Fruits and flowers which 



