4 
THE SPINELESS CACTUS : 
same may be said of the later introduced Wickson, America and numerous other plums 
and of my improved fruits and flowers which are extensively grown and generally offered 
for sale by most responsible firms in all civilized countries and are generally slowly but 
very surely replacing the old and heretofore standard varieties. 
It will be so with these “new creations” in Opuntia which I now offer for the first time. 
Thousands and thousands of others not now ready to be distributed are under test, this, 
preliminary circular partially describing only the beginnings of a great work with the 
Opuntias. 
Does this work which I have only just briefly outlined mean anything? Intelligent 
stock raisers everywhere know well that it means a new agricultural era for whole conti¬ 
nents like Australia and Africa and millions of otherwise useless acres in North and South 
America, Europe and Asia. And now during the past two years the United States Depart¬ 
ment of Agriculture have despached agents to all parts where cacti grow to look up this, 
matter and last season gave some valuable information* gathered from those who had 
for years been feeding the wild, thorny ones to their stock with good results when properly 
prepared by fire, though it is acknowledged that thus prepared a portion of their nutritive- 
value is lost and though the dangers of loss from feeding to stock are lessened, are not by 
an}^ means made safe, even by singeing or any other process, while many of these new thorn¬ 
less ones are as safe to handle and as safe to feed as beets, potatoes, carrots or pumpkins. 
But let it be understood that these thorns are not growing on the wild Opuntias for 
ornament any more than poison fangs, teeth, claws and stings are possessed by various 
animals. They are for defence, and when deprived of these defences they must be pro¬ 
tected from stock like any other feed grown in farm, fields or gardens. Still some doubter 
who has no knowledge of desert conditions will say, “Will it pay?” Does anything pay? 
Some people seem to think that corn, wheat, oats, barley, cotton, rice, tobacco, melons- 
and potatoes pay. How many tons of hay, beets or potatoes can be raised each season 
on an acre of good soil? Yes, well, by actual weight in the summer of 1906 in the cool 
coast climate of Sonoma County, Cal., on heavy, black “adobe” soil, generally thought 
wholly unsuited for cactus, my new Opuntias produced the first year, six months from single- 
rooted leaves, planted about June 1st, an average of 47-j pounds per plant on one-fourth 
acre, yielding at the distance planted (2^x5 feet) at the rate of 180,230 pounds (over- 
ninety tons)of forage per acre. Some of the best varieties produced very much above 
this average, though planted much too closely for permanent field culture; yet these notes- 
are oi interest on a subject of which little has been known. These Opuntias are always 
expected to produce nearly or quite double as much feed the second and succeeding years 
as they do the first season of planting. Yet, I would not expect one-fourth the above 
yield on desert soil without irrigation but would expect nearly or quite twice as much as 
the yield mentioned above in a very warm climate with one or two light irrigations each 
season. 
These improved Opuntias must of course be fenced from stock; the leaves to be fed to 
the stock when most needed, and in countries where great numbers of valuable stock 
are lost in times of unusual drought will be of inestimable value and will also, without 
doubt, prove of great value in less arid countries as a common farm or orchard crop even 
on the best agricultural soils but more especially on barren, rocky, hill and mountain sides 
and gravelly river beds which are now of no use whatever. 
The small, hard, wild thorny cactus has been a common everyday food for horses, camels, 
mules oxen, growing and beef stock, dairy cows, pigs and poultry for more than fifty 
years, though millions have died from the thorns,f yet, no systematic work for their im- 
-r> 'n -Jt 1 PG&r and other Cacti as Food for Stock.” Bureau of Animal Industry, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 
Bulletin No. 174. 
t The wild cactus is prepared by boiling or steaming in Australia in times of drought, but even though great loss of stock 
is sometimes reported wlien thus prepared, some are saved from otherwise certain starvation. 
