Early in the morning of a fine April day near Needles, California, on the Arizona border, we continue our journey into the desert. Before us stretches a panorama the like of which few among us have ever beheld; a picture majestic, tremendous, suggestive of the grandeur of Nature’s workshop, the vastness of those great sweeps of arid lands, covered with symmetrical, cross-patch, lacework, fantastic growths, of every size and shape and color imaginable. The Cholla are there, Giant Sahuaro rear their great trunks high into the air, and fantastic Joshua Trees lean toward us, their weird grotesque arms with long grasping fingers all pointing in one direction as if to guide the weary traveler on his way. And peering forth from among rocks, in the lee of a Giant Sahuaro or growing in a forest of the grotesque Joshua whose fantastic arms seem to engulf these tiny cacti, we find the Baby Pincushion, our Mammillaria (Coryphantha) or _Cactus Mammillaria_. He is a funny little ball-like plant, two or three inches in diameter, full of star-shaped spines, with an extra-long one in each star cluster and rather hooked over on the ends. These little aristocrats of the desert often cling together in groups, like a colony of sea urchins, and are very dainty when in bloom in the balmy month of April, when all the desert life is arraying itself in gay spring color and blossom. Out on the desert mesas and along the _bajadas_, or mountain slopes, we find so many fantastic objects that it is hard to decide just where to start. Nature has provided many wonderful mysterious growths for her desert land of plants and flowers, and she has been careful to place them where they will be able to thrive and to evolve. Many will be found hidden away under rocks and in deep cañon recesses; others out on the foothills, where it would seem that the sun would burn them up; still others are placed boldly on the mesas where wind and rain and sandstorms play hide and seek around them. Naturally the question of growth, which is next to the most vital problem of all “Where do they get their moisture?” now presents itself. We will begin at the bottom of the ladder, to-day, and will select the Baby Pincushion, the smallest of the cactus family. GROWTH