The fashion show of the desert is about to close, for we see approaching us in southeastern California the _Cereus Greggii_, the typical night blooming cereus. Have you been in the Hawaiian Islands? Have you attended any of the early Spanish fiestas? Have you heard the stories of the Night Blooming Cereus? If so, you have heard about the most beautiful, the most fragrant of flowers! No flower garden or conservatory is complete without this graceful queen of the desert, whose evanescent beauty surpasses the orchid and the rose; for the delicate shadings and exquisite colorings of the South American orchid are no finer than those of this night blooming cactus. Pen or brush in the hand of the genius scarce can do justice to the loveliness of Nature’s handiwork, the Goddess of the Night. Most popular of all the cacti, she delights to grow wild on the desert mesas, where the sensuous spicy fragrance of her beautiful blossoms perfumes the air for miles around, along the _bajadas_ in western Texas and Southern California, over the mesas of southern Arizona and far down into old Mexico. Never in abundance, this rare flower grows in twos and threes under a creosote, cat’s-claw, or other desert shrub, which affords the flower goddess protection from the hot desert winds that at times sweep over the mesas and down the cañons, and from the blazing heat of the noonday sun. She prefers a deep sandy loam along the swales or draws of the desert, at altitudes of twenty-five hundred feet and more, though sometimes she appears on the mountains as far up as forty-five hundred feet; and related varieties, _Cereus pentagonus_ and _Deeringii_, even grace the plains at sea level in the swampy lands of Lake Okechobee down in the south of Florida. Another cousin, the _Cereus undatus_, grows wild all over the tropics, and is a great favorite among natives and whites in Honolulu; around Punahou College there, in Punahou Valley, the hedge of this Night Blooming Cereus is a half-mile long, and on a single night five thousand blossoms have unfolded! This bloom, often twelve inches long, is the best known of all the Night Blooming Cereus flowers.