Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/158

 *[Footnote: (Zucc.) and by E. platyceras (Lem.) (Wislizenus, Tour to Northern Mexico, 1848, p. 97.) The Echinocactus stainesii reaches from 2 to 2-1/2 feet diameter; E. visnago, from Mexico, upwards of 4 English feet high, is above 3 English feet diameter, and weighs from 700 to 2000 lbs.: while Cactus nanus, which we found near Sondorillo, in the province of Jaen, is so small that, being only slightly rooted in the sand, it gets between the toes of dogs. The Melocactuses, which are full of juice in the dryest seasons like the Ravenala of Madagascar (forest-leaf in the language of the country, from rave, raven, a leaf, and ala, the Javanese halas, a forest), are vegetable fountains; and the manner in which the horses and mules stamp them open with their hoofs, at the risk of injury from the spines, has been already mentioned (Vol. I p. 19). Since the last quarter of a century Cactus opuntia has extended itself in a remarkable manner into Northern Africa, Syria, Greece, and the whole of the South of Europe; even penetrating, in Africa, from the coasts far into the interior of the country, and associating itself with the indigenous plants.

When one has been accustomed to see Cactuses only in our hothouses, one is astonished at the degree of density and hardness which the ligneous fibres attain in old cactus stems. The Indians know that cactus wood is incorruptible, and excellent for oars and for the thresholds of doors. There is hardly anything in vegetable physiognomy which makes so singular and ineffaceable an impression on a newly arrived person, as the sight of an arid plain thickly]*