Chapter II. 

 CULTIVATION. 



BY noting the conditions in which plants are found growing 

 in a natural state we may obtain some clue to their successful 

 management when placed under conditions more or less artificial, 

 and in the case of Cacti knowledge of this kind may be helpful. 

 With few exceptions, they will not thrive in any but sunny lands, 

 where, during the greater part of the year, dry weather prevails. 



Cacti are almost all American, being most abundant in 

 California, Mexico and Texas ; also in the provinces of Central 

 and South America, as far south as Chili, and in many of the islands. 

 " There is hardly any physiognomical character of exotic vegetation 

 that produces a more singular and ineffaceable impression on the mind 

 of the traveller than an arid plain densely covered with columnar 

 or candelabra-like stems of Cactuses, similar to those near Cumana, 

 Nw Barcelona, Cora, and in the province of Jaen de Bracamoros."* 

 Cacti are as peculiar a feature of the vegetation of the New 

 World as the Heaths are of the Old, or as Gum-trees in Australia. 



The Opuntias, or Indian Figs, are now widely distributed. In 

 countries bordering the Mediterranean, in South Africa and in 

 Australia, they have long been naturalised, and have become a 

 serious nuisance to farmers and landowners. 



Although the countries in which Cacti naturally abound are, for 

 the greater portion of the year, dry and warm, heavy rains occur 

 at certain periods, often accompanied by extreme warmth and 

 bright sunshine. It is during this rainy period that new growth 

 is made. 



There is nothing in the nature of the requirements of Cacti 

 to render their successful management difficult to anyone who 

 possesses a heated greenhouse, or even a window recess to which 

 sunlight can be admitted during some portion of the day. In 

 large garden establishments it is possible to provide a spacious 

 house specially for their cultivation in which many of them may 

 attain a large size. One may sometimes see them growing 

 in a cottager's window or in a small greenhouse, and in health 

 and beauty they are at least eaual to any grown in the most 

 elaborately prepared plant- houses. 



* HumK'i**'* <r V :e* of Nature." 



B 2 



