Arizona Gardens 223 
all, a grey little plant whose black spines 
resemble trout hooks and whose edible berries 
are brilliant scarlet. A glance over this gar- 
den reveals the fact that the cactus family, 
formidable by reason of its armour, is every- 
where the protecting genius not only of birds, 
but much more of plants. This seems to 
apply less to Bigelow’s cholla than to other 
species of Opuntia among whose spiny lobes 
one will usually see a host of blossoms: now 
a beautiful white phlox, again a blue phacelia 
and white daisies, or the yellow blossom of 
the hosackia. It appears exactly as if the 
plants had crowded within the protecting 
arms of the cacti with as good a show of reason 
as in the case of the cactus wren. The simple 
fact is that cattle and sheep devour them 
elsewhere, but within the precincts of the 
cactus plants their noses are pricked by the 
needle-like spines and the flowers within are 
perforce unmolested. 
In this garden the creosote bush is one of 
the few shrubs which is not armed, and its 
varnished evergreen leaves are far more in 
evidence than the artemisias. Yucca is a 
rare genus hereabouts, while the agave grows 
sparingly on the lava cliffs. The dalea is a 
shrub quite as prickly as the ocotilla—a true 
