We have come more than two hundred miles on this second springtime trek across the ocean of sand and sagebrush and mesquite, with its brilliant flashes of color and fragrance, and still the clumps of dainty pincushions attract us almost against our will. As the sun completes his journey across the western skies, one of the most beautiful of all Nature’s creations claims our attention; this pincushion has earned a title appropriate to its lovely self, the bright pink and rose tints of its bell-like blossoms toning into the pink glow of the desert sunset in a circle of full open brilliant flowers, their many brightly glowing segments spreading out like so many iridescent rays of the setting sun. What name could be more apropos than “Sunset Cactus”? With her evanescent beauty and delicate perfume she is one of the most popular as well as the most abundant of the Mammillaria, ranging from Mexico through Southern California and Arizona to southern Utah. From two to ten inches tall, only a little more than two inches in breadth, she grows more slender than her brothers; her twenty rows of compact tubercles are set in a beautiful gray-green symmetrical spiral, and bear twenty or so slender grayish white radiating spines with dark tips, a half-inch long or less, and two central thorns sticking out stouter than the others, their bodies pale pink and their sharp tips curving upward in a transparent golden fringe of color. Brown Pincushion (_Mammillaria Wilcoxii_) _Southern and Southeastern Arizona_ The Brown Pincushion is one of the most attractive of the southwestern cacti, and is a rare creation indeed. This tiny cactus is two or three inches tall and about as broad, with a beautiful halo of red-brown thorns covering the whole plant, the hooked central spines and whitish radials slender, sharp, needlelike, with pointed tips. Through these the tiny flowers peep in two rows of thirty-five or forty bright purple or pink petals, recurved into the pretty cornucopia effect that we have seen so often among the clumps of Pincushions on our way across the desert. But beware of pressing the fingers against this dainty pincushion too hard, for if the sharp points of the central spines get hooked into the hand it is only with great difficulty and discomfort that one can get free. When the first offenders are released other spines hook into the flesh, and the plant seems to play with the victim for some time to see just how far it can go in provoking one so lacking in desert knowledge. Horned Toad Cactus (_Mammillaria Mainæ_) _Southern Arizona and Northern Sonora_