218 A SKETCH OF 



the silent night, beam like suns, and in the wonderful 

 sporting of their stamens, seem almost to strive towards a 

 higher an animal life. 



But it is not the beauty of the blossom alone which 

 gladdens us, not the refreshing sap alone that revives 

 the languishing traveller. The economic uses are also 

 manifold. Almost all the Cacti bear edible fruit, and a 

 portion of them are among the most delightful refresh- 

 ments of the hot zones which ripen them. Almost all 

 the larger Opuntias, known by the name of Indian Figs, 

 furnish, in the West Indies and Mexico, a favourite 

 dessert fruit, and even the little rose-red berries of the 

 Mammillarias, which with us are tasteless, have, beneath 

 the tropics, a pleasant, acidulated, sweet juice. We may 

 say, in general terms, that their fruit is a nobler form of 

 our native Gooseberry and Currant, to which also they are 

 the nearest allies in a botanical point of view. Succulent 

 as is the stem of most of the Cacti, yet, in the course of 

 time, they perfect in it a wood as firm as it is light. 

 This is especially the case in the tall columnar species 

 of CereuSj the old dead stems of which, after the decay 

 of the grey-green rind, remain erect, their white wood 

 standing ghost-like among the living stems, till a benighted 

 traveller seizes it in that scantily wooded region, to make a 

 fire to protect him from the musquitoes, to bake his 

 Maize-cake, or burns it as a torch to light up the dark 

 tropical night. It is from the last use that they have 

 obtained their name of Torch-thistles. These stems, on 

 account of their lightness, are carried up on mules to 

 the heights of the Cordilleras, to serve as beams, posts 

 and door-sills in the houses ; as, for instance, in the 

 mayoral of Antisana, perhaps the highest inhabited spot 

 in the world (12,604 feet). Just as their allies, the 



