There are several other varieties of yucca that possess no particular
value, but all are handsome bloomers, and the mass of white flowers
which unfold during the season of efflorescence adds much to the beauty
of the landscape.

The prickly pear cactus, or Indian fig, of the genus Opuntia is a
common as well as a numerous family. The soil and climate of the
southwest from Texas to California seem to be just to its liking. It
grows rank and often forms dense thickets. The root is a tough wood
from which, it is said, the best Mexican saddletrees are made.

The plant consists of an aggregation of thick, flat, oval leaves, which
are joined together by narrow bands of woody fiber and covered with
bundles of fine, sharp needles. Its pulp is nutritious and cattle like
the young leaves, but will not eat them after they become old and hard
unless driven to do so by the pangs of hunger. In Texas the plant is
gathered in large quantities and ground into a fine pulp by machinery
which is then mixed with cotton-seed meal and fed to cattle. The
mixture makes a valuable fattening ration and is used for finishing
beef steers for the market.

The cholla, or cane cactus, is also a species of Opuntia, but its stem
or leaf is long and round instead of short and flat. It is thickly
covered with long, fine, silvery-white needles that glisten in the sun.
Its stem is hollow and filled with a white pith like the elder. After
the prickly bark is stripped off the punk can be picked out through the
fenestra with a penknife, which occupation affords pleasant pastime for
a leisure hour. When thus furbished up the unsightly club becomes an
elegant walking stick.

The cholla is not a pleasant companion as all persons know who have had
any experience with it. Its needles are not only very sharp, but also
finely barbed, and they penetrate and cling fast like a burr the moment
that they are touched. Cowboys profess to believe that the plant has
some kind of sense as they say that it jumps and takes hold of its
victim before it is touched. This action, however, is only true in the
seeming, as its long transparent needles, being invisible, are touched
before they are seen. When they catch hold of a moving object, be it
horse or cowboy, an impulse is imparted to the plant that makes it seem
to jump. It is an uncanny movement and is something more than an
ocular illusion, as the victim is ready to testify.

These desert plants do not ordin