Many so - called thornless or partly 

 thornless ones were obtained, but not one 

 among the thousands from all these 

 sources was free from thorns and 

 spicules, and even worse, those which 

 were the most promising in these respects 

 often bore the poorest fruit, were the most 

 unproductive of fruit or produced less 

 fodder, or were less hardy than the wild 

 thorny species and varieties. 



The first work was to select the best of 

 these, cross them, raise numerous seed- 

 lings, select the best of these and so con- 

 tinue hoping for improvement. 



One of the first and not unexpected 

 facts of importance to be observed was 

 that by crossing, the thorns were often 

 increased rather than diminished, but not 

 so with all. Some very few still became 

 even more thornless than their so-called 



thornless parents with greatly increased 

 size and quality of leaves (raquettes or 

 slabs), and among them a combination of 

 the best qualities of both parents with 

 surprising productiveness of slabs for 

 feeding. 



The work is still in progress, but on a 

 still larger scale and now these improved 

 Opuntias promise to be one of the most 

 important food-producers of this age, 

 some of these new creations grown from 

 the same lot of seed yielding fully ten 

 times as much feed as others under ex- 

 actly the same conditions. 



Old half thornless ones have been 

 grown for ages. Among the very nu- 

 merous wild seedling Opuntias, partially 

 thornless ones have appeared from time to 

 time and these have been growing gen- 



Wild Thorny Cactus 



