(Named in honor of Dr. J. Gregg, student of cacti and plant explorer of Northern Mexico) How to identify and how it grows One of the most beautiful of all cactus flowers. The plants grow two to three feet tall, rarely eight feet, the blackish grotesque stems densely fine hairy and loosely branched, resembling a crooked stick or a snake. They are very slender, a half-inch or so in diameter, and are fluted with four to six blackish gray-green ridges, lined with spines less than a fourth-inch long. The latter are arranged in such manner as to resemble a small insect, and have thick bulbous bases. Each slender trunk is supported by a central woody core. There is a fleshy root a foot or so below the ground, weighing fifty to a hundred pounds, which acts as a reservoir for water and food, so that the _Greggii_ blossoms every year, rain or no rain. The flowers are from seven to ten inches long and about six inches across, showing a beautiful combination of coloring, a background of soft waxy white shading into pale lavender in the forty or more petals, with touches of pink and tan in the sepals, forming into a cornucopia. The stamens form a corona extending beyond the petals. The fragrance is delightfully spicy, strong, and persistent; the plants blossom only one night each year, generally in the latter part of June. This most beautiful of all the cacti in our Southwest usually grows in the lee of a creosote or other desert shrub in sandy loam. How to grow Grow plants from seed in pots or flats, in sandy loam with partial shade, or transplant without injuring the large fleshy root, setting the top of the root about a foot below the surface in loamy soil in the protection of shrubs; mature plants will blossom within two years of transplanting. Water well during the growing season, in dry weather about once a month. Do not cultivate. Plants grow out of doors or indoors and will endure a temperature of twenty-five degrees below freezing without injury. In localities where the winter weather is colder than this the plants must be protected or grown under glass. CHAPTER II CACTUS SPINES AND PECULIARITIES And now we will pause in our trip across Cactus Land to take up the many peculiar features which characterize and differentiate these odd desert plants, and to tell of those individual and unique growths, the terrible swordlike thorns of the strange Fantastic Clan. PECULIARITIES Cacti are not closely related to any other family of plants, and there is no certainty as to which group of plants they developed from. Their immediate ancestors perhaps have disappeared in the hazy past. They stand, therefore, alone. In this respect few other plants resemble them; only one or two other families, for instance the Ocotillos or Fouquieriaceæ, are in a like position.