192 
THE COLLECTIONS IN THE CONSERVATORY COURT 
Attention has been called before to the collections in the court 
of conservatory range no. I, which is located but a short distance 
from the terminus of the Third Avenue Elevated Railroad. This 
court is on the south side of the conservatory, and has in either 
end a large pool fifty by one hundred feet, each devoted to a 
collection of water lilies, the one to the west containing the tender 
sorts, while the easterly one is allotted to the hardier kinds, 
those which remain permanently, both summer and winter, in 
their present position. 
Between these two pools, arranged in five beds, is a large 
collection of desert plants. These two groups of plants, that of 
the aquatic world and that of the desert, represent the two ex- 
tremes in plant environment, and exemplify forcibly how plants 
can accommodate themselves to conditions so diverse. The 
water lilies are submerged, their roots embedded in the soil two 
to three feet below the surface of the water, the only portions 
exposed to the air being the upper surface of the leaf-blades 
and the flowers. In great contrast to these are the desert plants 
in the nearby beds, which, in their native environment, have to 
contend with a lack of water as marked as its abundance is 
pronounced in the other case 
As the water supply of desert plants is precarious, they must 
be provided with means for water-storage to carry them through 
the Jong dry spells to which they are subjected. This need is 
supplied by the thickened stems or leaves, or by large tubers, 
one of which will be found in all perennial desert plants. Among 
the members of the cactus family, which form a large part of 
this collection of desert plants, the thickened stems are the storage 
organs. In the long narrow bed to the west of the central one 
is a large collection of the genus Opuntia, known often as prickly 
pears. In some of these the stems are made up of flattened 
joints which are round, elliptic or oblong, while in others the 
joints are cylindric. These joints are usually referred to as 
leaves, but they are not, the leaves of most cacti being very small 
bodies borne on these joints and soon falling off. 
In the large central bed immediately across the path are other 
