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The cap is persistent, and increases annually with the stem. MAMILLARIA. Stems short, usually globose, and covered with tubercles or mammae, rarely ridged, the apex bearing spiny cushions; flowers mostly in rings round the stem. PELECYPHORA. Stem small, club-shaped; tubercles in spiral rows, and flattened on the top, where are two rows of short scale-like spines.
Only when leaves fall and the light is low and slant, one sees the long clean flanks of the jackrabbits, leaping like small deer, and of late afternoons little cotton-tails scamper in the runways. But the most one sees of the burrowers, gophers, and mice is the fresh earthwork of their newly opened doors, or the pitiful small shreds the butcher-bird hangs on spiny shrubs.
And yet there was something in the northern city this big square with all the trams threading through, the little yellow Continental trams: and the spiny bulk of the great cathedral, like a grey-purple sea-urchin with many spines, on the one side, the ornamental grass-plots and flower beds on the other: the big shops going all along the further strands, all round: and the endless restless nervous drift of a north Italian crowd, so nervous, so twitchy; nervous and twitchy as the slipping past of the little yellow tram-cars; it all affected him with a sense of strangeness, nervousness, and approaching winter.
The arrangement of the spines is shown in the illustration, as also is the position of the flowers, which are small, with narrow purple petals and brown-red sepals. The plant is a native of Mexico and Guatemala, and would require stove treatment. We have seen only small living examples, but according to descriptions and figures, the most interesting character it possesses is its spiny armament.
Flowers 3 in. in diameter, appearing from May onwards; petals yellow, dashed with rose, sometimes wholly rose-coloured or brick-red. Stamens deep red; pistil yellow, with a conical stigma. Fruit nearly round, spiny, about 2 in. long. A native of Wisconsin, and westward to the San Francisco Mountains; introduced in 1814.
As he crashed through the wood, the little branches whipped his face unmercifully; and the spiny shoots of the jackpines tore his clothes. He ran full tilt into unyielding obstacles; and was flung aside, unconscious of the shock. He instinctively sought the other camp. He found it deserted; the tent gone; the door of the empty cabin swinging idly in the wind.
Being an expert flyer, the kingbird had almost overtaken the fugitive, when suddenly the red-head wheeled to one side, flung himself somehow or other over a telegraph wire, turning at the same time and catching with his claws at the wire, where he clung, his body bent in an arc, holding his enemy at bay with his long, pointed beak and spiny tail.
We were glad to be dressed and mounted, the following morning. Riding across the river, we made the ascent to the summit, on which were the ruins of Tecomavaca Viejo. The ascent was so abrupt that our horses were repeatedly compelled to stop for breath. The trail passed through cactuses, and spiny shrubs and trees, which tore our clothes more than all we had endured during weeks of travel.
The long-toothed saw leaves the delicate sheath unbroken, although a puff of the breath is enough to tear it; the ferocious spurs slip out of it without leaving so much as a scratch. I was far from expecting such a result. Having the spiny weapons of the legs in mind, I imagined that those limbs would moult in scales and patches, or that the sheathing would rub off like a dead scarf-skin.
It has a soft, depressed body, spiny beneath at the base of the legs and on the thorax. One or both of the two posterior pairs of feet bear suckers, and all are more or less covered with long, slender hairs. This insect may be destroyed by the same remedies as are used for lice and for the human itch. The best remedy is probably a solution of sulphuret of potassium.
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