210 Tfie Cactus. 



leaves in the Indian Fig, or some of the more common species 

 of Cereus, arc only the flattened joints of the stem. It would 

 be difficult to find any race of plants where a more obvious 

 connection exists between the manner in which they are con- 

 structed and the situation it is their destiny to live in. The 

 greater number grow in hot, dry, rocky places, where they are 

 exposed many months in the year to the fiercest beams of a 

 tropical sun, without a possibility of obtaining from the parched 

 and hardened soil more than the most scanty supply of necessary 

 food. Under such circumstances, plants of an ordinary con- 

 struction would perish ; but Cactuses have a special power of 

 resisting heat and drought, and, like the camel, they carry with 

 them a supply of water for many not days, but months. It 

 usually happens, that once a year during several weeks, at least, 

 the air that surrounds them is saturated with moisture, and the 

 soil they live in is drenched by ceaseless rains. At this lime ihey 

 grow fast ; all the little cavities in their tissue, of which there are 

 countless millions, are filled with liquid nourishment, and they 

 may be literally said to gorge themselves with food. Then, 

 when the rain ceases and the air dries up, and the spirit of the 

 desert resumes his withering dominion over their climate, Cac- 

 tuses are in the most robust health, and their cells are abundantly 

 supplied with provision against scarcity. But these supplies 

 would be quickly consumed by plants only protected by a thin 

 cuticle and having their surface pierced by millions of breathing 

 pores, all actively exhaling the evaporable matter that lies be- 

 neath them, and an early death would be the inevitable result. 

 Such indeed is the lot of all the gay companions of the Cactus, 

 which surrounded it during the season of feasting and prosperity, 

 and to which Nature has given no special means of enduring 

 the hardships to which their lot exposes them. A few days or 

 weeks suffice to sweep their forms from the face of the creation ; 

 their leaves rapidly consume the stores deposited in their stems, 

 their stems turn in vain to the roots for a renewed supply, for 

 after but a little while the arid earth has nothing to part with, and 

 then the leaves wither and fall off, the stems shrink up and crack 

 with the dry heat, and the roots themselves in many cases fol- 

 low the same fate. With Cactuses this is different ; they have 

 so tough and thick a hide that what liquid substances they con- 

 tain can only pass through it in minute quantities : the breathing 



