The lover of plants and flowers which thrive on the desert wastes has often but little conception of the mystic beauty which lingers there, wrapped up in the delicate waxlike coverings of these wondrous blossoms. Exotic and strikingly beautiful, some of them are. It would seem that Nature, the Great Gardener, has caused the mountains to grow their huge trees bedecked in evergreen, snow-crowned and haloed in gorgeous golden sunsets with tints of spectral beauty; the humid plains to grow their grasses, somber and uninviting, the providers of mankind, and their trees, low and squatty, with shade for the tired herd and the dusty traveler, and also their velvet grassy slopes lovely to look upon. But what of the desert! Well, we do not intend to paint you a picture of desolation, where no living thing can grow. Out of the débris of worlds in the making, so to speak, there was left the great Amphitheater of the Sun where the scorching rays beat down. In this hot caldron of alkali and sand and rock Nature went to work, and soon there appeared tiny spiny shoots, leafy but devoid of color. All were hungry and thirsty, and soon rain came, and then the transformation! Water appeared under the surface, and slowly rose saturating the tiny roots. The hot winds of the day turned to cooling zephyrs of the night which gently kissed each plant and flower until the coming of the sun. With each kiss of the dew-laden night air came the delicate perfume and the wonderful color scheme which make all the cacti so attractive to the eye and so stirring to the senses. From crannies and nooks, crevices and rock-cracks, along the foothills and on the slopes, began to appear the haciendas of the flowers; in time they thrived and multiplied. To-day on the great deserts of the Southwest along the Arizona-California line and eastward, there are vast stretches of cacti of every weave and pattern imaginable, as symmetrical in design as though each were first wrought on the Infinite Draughting Board and then carefully and wisely planted by the Great Gardener to live forever. Our third trek starts from one of the beautiful California or Arizona sites that dot the Colorado River bounding these two states, leading into the gullies, draws, or cañons that are so numerous there, in search of a peculiar and striking growth commonly known as the Hedgehog Cactus. Since the species are very thorny, the comparison to the little animal so full of bristles is an apt one. The scientific name, _Echinocereus_, taken from the Latin _echinus_, hedgehog, and _cereus_, torch, or the Hedgehog-Torch. GROWTH AND HABITATS