s to
thrive, and you will find it turned into a tree and the
thorn merely a dull blade-ending. Follow the sahuaro and
the pitahaya into the tropics again, and with their
cousin, the organ cactus, you will find them growing a
soft thorn that would hardly penetrate clothing.

But are they not just as much exposed to browsing animals in the high
table-lands as in the desert, if not more so?

Mr. Van Dyke asserts that Nature is more solicitous about the species
than about the individual. She is no more solicitous about the one than
the other. The same conditions apply to all. But the species are
numerous; a dozen units may be devoured while a thousand remain. A
general will sacrifice many soldiers to save his army, he will sacrifice
one man to save ten, but Nature's ways are entirely different. Both
contending armies are hers, and she is equally solicitous about both.
She wants the cacti to survive, and she wants the desert animals to
survive, and she favors both equally. All she asks of them is that they
breed and multiply endlessly. Notwithstanding, according to Van Dyke,
Nature has taken such pains to protect her desert plants, he yet
confesses that, although it seems almost incredible, it is nevertheless
true that "deer and desert cattle will eat the cholla--fruit, stem, and
trunk--though it bristle with spines that will draw blood from the human
hand at the slightest touch."

This question of spines and thorns in vegetation is a baffling one
because Nature's ways are so unlike our ways. Darwin failed utterly in
his theory of the origin of species, because he proceeded upon the idea
that Nature selects as man selects. You cannot put Nature into a
formula.

Behold how every branch and twig of our red thorn bristles with cruel
daggers! But if they are designed to keep away bird or beast from eating
its fruit, see how that would defeat the tree's own ends! If no creature
ate its little red apples and thus scattered its seeds, the fruit would
rot on the ground beneath the branches, and the tribe of red thorns
would not increase. And increase alone is Nature's end.

It is safe to say, as a general statement, that the animal kingdom is
full of design. Every part and organ of our bodies has its purpose which
serves the well-being of the whole. I do not recall any character of
bird or beast, fish or insect, that does not show purpose, but in the
plant world Nature seems to allow herself more freedom, or does not