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This latter bears a large eatable fruit, curious in having a hollow chamber between the pulp and the kernel, beset with hard spines which produce serious wounds if they enter the skin. The eatable part appeared to me not much more palatable than a raw potato; but the inhabitants of Santarem are very fond of it, and undertake the most toilsome journeys on foot to gather a basketful.

Of some trees the trunk is perfectly smooth, of others it is defended by enormous spines, and the whole are often apparently sustained by the slanting stems of a huge wild fig-tree.

Instead of being drawn up into two spines, the top of his head was rounded, bald and shiny, and only at the back were the two spines visible, shifted downward. The front of the head was thickly clothed with golden hair, which hung down bang-like over a round, glistening, single, median eye.

Once or twice they were in peril from cloud bursts, and they were lamed by the cactus spines on the prairie, and by the stones and sand of the river bed while dragging the boats against the current; but all these trials, labors, and risks were only enough to give zest to their exploration of the unknown land.

Like enough there will be no need of guns." A gray light was sifting into the sky, and still they rode, winding up toward the peaks of the divide. Jim, leading the way, drew rein and pointed to a cactus bush beside the trail. Among its spines lay a gray felt hat. From it his eye wandered to the very evident signs of a struggle that had taken place.

Her masts cut somewhere on the coast of Japan, where her original ones were lost overboard in a gale her masts stood stiffly up like the spines of the three old kings of Cologne. Her ancient decks were worn and wrinkled, like the pilgrim-worshipped flag-stone in Canterbury Cathedral where Beckett bled.

She rolled the three words on her tongue as though they were delicious morsels from which she would extract all possible savour and sweetness. And when she did this you could almost hear the click of the stiffening spines of Mrs. Lamb, Mrs. Brunswick, and Mrs. Wormser.

Habit erect; joints cylindrical, branching freely, and forming trees from 8 ft. to 30 ft. high. Stems covered with oblong tubercles and tufts of long, needle-like spines, which give the plant a very ferocious aspect. Flowers on the ends of the young branches, 2 in. to 3 in. in diameter, bright purple in colour, developing in June.

Some groups shrank from the battle by burrowing underground like the rabbit; some, like the squirrel or the ape, took refuge in the trees; some, like the whale and seal, returned to the water; some shrank into armour, like the armadillo, or behind fences of spines, like the hedgehog; some, like the bat, escaped into the air.

Those with the more flint in their skins were the more apt to survive and "breed." The threads of flint increase until they form a sort of thorn-thicket round a little social group, or a complete lattice round an individual body. Next, spikes or spines jut out from the lattice, partly for additional protection, partly to keep the little body afloat at the surface of the sea.