62 A DESERT FRUIT. 



fruit, however, they are euphorbias to* the end; it is only 

 in the thick and fleshy stem that they resemble their 

 nobler and more beautiful Western rivals. No true 

 cactus grows truly wild anywhere on earth except in 

 America. The family was developed there, and, till man 

 transplanted it, never succeeded in gaining a foothold 

 elsewhere. Essentially tropical in type, it was provided 

 with no means of dispersing its seeds across the enormous 

 expanse of intervening ocean which separated its habitat 

 from the sister continents. 



But why are cactuses so almost universally prickly ? 

 From the grotesque little melon-cactuses of our English 

 hothouses to the huge and ungainly monsters which form 

 miles of hedgerows on Jamaican hillsides, the members 

 of this desert family are mostly distinguished by their 

 abundant spines and thorns, or by the irritating hairs 

 which break off in your skin if you happen to brush 

 incautiously against them. Cactuses are the hedgehogs 

 of the vegetable world ; their motto is Nemo me impune 

 lacessit. Many a time in the West Indies I have pushed 

 my hand for a second into a bit of tangled ' bush,' as the 

 negroes call it, to seize some rare flower or some beautiful 

 insect, and been punished for twenty-four hours after- 

 wards by the stings of the almost invisible and glass-like 

 little cactus-needles. When you rub them they only 

 break in pieces, and every piece inflicts a fresh wound on 

 the flesh where it rankles. Some of the species have large, 

 stout prickles ; some have clusters of irritating hairs at 

 measured distances ; and some rejoice ia both means of 

 defence at once, scattered impartially over their entire 

 surface. In the prickly pear, the bundles of prickles are 



