These improved Opuntias must, of 

 course, be fenced from stock when young, 

 but after two or three years' growth stock 

 may safely be turned loose among them 

 as with age the main stem becomes woody 

 and will not be injured, but on removal 

 of stock will at once make a most rapid 

 new growth. 



The leaves are to be fed to stock at any 

 season throughout the whole year when 

 most needed, and in countries where great 

 numbers of valuable stock are lost in times 

 of unusual drought, will be of inestimable 

 value and will also prove of enormous 

 value in less arid countries as a common 

 farm or orchard crop, even on the best 

 agricultural soils, but more especially on 

 barren, rocky, hill and mountain sides and 

 gravelly river beds, which are now of no 

 use whatever. 



The small, hard, wild thorny cactus has 

 been a common every-day food for horses, 

 camels, mules, oxen, growing and beef 

 stock, dairy cows, pigs, and poultry for 

 more than fifty years. 



Though millions have died from the 

 thorns*, yet no systematic work for their 

 improvement had been taken up until 

 some seventeen years ago; now agricul- 

 turists and horticulturists in every land 

 are deeply interested, and the governments 

 of all countries are taking measures to se- 

 cure a stock of the improved Burbank 

 Opuntias to avoid if possible the too com- 

 mon occurrence of famines, for the Opun- 

 tias can remain uncultivated and undis- 

 turbed year after year, constantly increas- 

 ing in size and weight until needed ; then 

 each acre will preserve the lives of a hun- 

 dred animals or even human beings for 

 months until other food can be obtained. 



The wild cactus is generally prepared 

 for stock by singeing the thorns with fire, 

 yet this never destroys all of the thorns. 



Those who have fed the wild cactus ex- 

 tensively acknowledge that cattle are 

 often seen with blood dripping from their 

 mouths, and that their throats and 

 tongues become at last inflamed, very 

 painful and hard, like a piece of sole 

 leather. 



How would you enjoy being fed on 

 needles, fish-hooks, toothpicks, barbed 

 wire fence, nettles and chestnut burrs? 



The wild, thorny cactus is and always 

 must be more or less of a pest. 



Millions of cattle, sheep, goats, hogs, 

 ostriches and other animals have been 

 destroyed by it. 



The new thornless ones will withstand 

 flood, drought, heat, wind and poor soil 

 better than the wild ones and will produce 

 one hundred tons of good food where the 

 average wild ones will produce ten tons 

 of inferior food. 



Dry seasons, which are certain to come, 

 have been and will continue to be the 

 source of irreparable loss to stock raisers. 



Many of the owners of the great stock 

 ranges have seen the necessity of some 

 insurance against these fearful losses and 

 are devoting certain tracts to these new 

 cactus plants to avert this danger as well 

 as for supplementing the usual feed. 



J^The wild cactus is prepared by boiling or steam- 

 ing in Australia in times of drought, but even 

 though great loss of stock is sometimes reported 

 when thus prepared, some are saved from other- 

 wise certain starvation. 



Professor J. P. Leotsakos says in regard to the 

 cactus: 



"The old, somewhat thorny fruiting cactus is, in 

 my native country, one of the principal foods for 

 both opulence and poverty during three months 

 of the year when it is abundant. These pear 

 fruits are delicious, exceedingly nutritious and 

 healthful. I would rather, by far, have half a 

 dozen of them for breakfast than the best beef- 

 steak or any other food. The fruit of these per- 

 fected cacti is the best fruit food for man or 

 beast, and Mr. Burbank is a great benefactor in 

 perfecting the cactus. If he lived in Greece a 

 monument would be erected to him in every city. 

 I have never seen in all the world such an as- 

 tounding crop of fruit as I saw on Burbank's new 

 varieties of truly spineless cactus at Santa Eosa, 

 California." 



Prof. 3. P. Leotsakos is a graduate of the 

 Royal Classical College of Athens and a teleiofoi- 

 tos of the law department of the University of 

 Athens, and belongs to one of the best-known 

 families of contemporary Greece. His father was 

 the commander of the 'revolutionary army that 

 brought about the deposition of King Otho in 

 1862, afterwards an aide-de-camp to the present 

 King George, and finally Senator from Lakonia 

 in the Greek Parliament at Athens. D. N. Bo- 

 tassi, Consul-General of Greece. 



