ngenuity, has managed to best the plant, on this its own ground,
and turn it into a useful fodder for his beasts of burden. The prickly
pear is planted abundantly on bare rocks in Algeria, where nothing else
would grow, and is cut down when adult, divested of its thorns by a
rough process of hacking, and used as food for camels and cattle. It
thus provides fresh moist fodder in the African summer when the grass
is dried up and all other pasture crops have failed entirely.

The flowers of the prickly pear, as of many other cactuses, grow
apparently on the edge of the leaves, which alone might give the
observant mind a hint as to the true nature of those thick and
flattened expansions. For whenever what look like leaves bear flowers
or fruit on their edge or midrib, as in the familiar instance of
butcher's broom, you may be sure at a glance they are really branches
in disguise masquerading as foliage. The blossoms in the prickly pear
are large, handsome, and yellow; at least, they would be handsome if
one could ever see them, but they are generally covered so thick in
dust that it is difficult properly to appreciate their beauty. They
have a great many petals in numerous rows, and a great many stamens in
a rosette in the centre; and, to the best of my knowledge and belief,
as lawyers put it, they are fertilized for the most part by tropical
butterflies; but on this point, having observed them but little in
their native habitats, I speak under correction.

The fruit itself, to which the plant owes its popular name, is
botanically a berry, though a very big one, and it exhibits in a highly
specialized degree the general tactics of all its family. As far as
their leaf-like stems go, the main object in life of the cactuses
is--not to get eaten. But when it comes to the fruit, this object in
life is exactly reversed; the plant desires its fruit to be devoured by
some friendly bird or adapted animal, in order that the hard little
seeds buried in the pulp within may be dispersed for germination under
suitable conditions. At the same time, true to its central idea, it
covers even the pear itself with deterrent and prickly hairs, meant to
act as a defence against useless thieves or petty depredators, who
would eat the soft pulp on the plant as it stands (much as wasps do
peaches) without benefiting the species in return by dispersing its
seedlings. This practice is fully in accordance with the general habit
of tropical or sub-tro