ue and persistent
leaves; but these may be considered anomalous in the order.

The term "succulent" is applied to Cactuses because of the large
proportion of cellular tissue, i.e., flesh, of their stems, as compared
with the woody portion. In some of them, when young, the woody system
appears to be altogether absent, and they have the appearance of a mass
of fleshy matter, like a vegetable marrow. This succulent mass is
protected by a tough skin, often of leather-like firmness, and almost
without the little perforations called breathing and evaporating pores,
which in other plants are very numerous. This enables the Cactuses to
sustain without suffering the full ardour of the burning sun and
parched-up nature of the soil peculiar to the countries where they are
native. Nature has endowed Cactuses with a skin similar to what she
clothes many succulent fruits with, such as the Apple, Plum, Peach, &c.,
to which the sun's powerful rays are necessary for their growth and
ripening.

The spiny coat of the majority of Cactuses is no doubt intended to serve
as a protection from the wild animals inhabiting with them the sterile
plains of America, and to whom the cool watery flesh of the Cactus would
otherwise fall a prey. Indeed, these spines are not sufficient to
prevent some animals from obtaining the watery insides of these plants,
for we read that mules and wild horses kick them open and greedily
devour their succulent flesh. It has also been suggested that the spines
are intended to serve the plants as a sort of shade from the powerful
sunshine, as they often spread over and interlace about the stems.

CHAPTER III.

CULTIVATION.

By noting the conditions in which plants are found growing in a natural
state, we obtain some clue to their successful management, when placed
under conditions more or less artificial; and, in the case of Cactuses,
knowledge of this kind is of more than ordinary importance. In the
knowledge that, with only one or two exceptions, they will not exist in
any but sunny lands, where, during the greater part of the year, dry
weather prevails, we perceive what conditions are likely to suit them
when under cultivation in our plant-houses.

Cactuses are all American (using this term for the whole of the New
World) with only one or two exceptions (several species of Rhipsalis
have been found wild in Africa, Madagascar, and Ceylon), and, broadly
speaking, they are mostly tropical plants, not-wit