We are approaching the lovely Santa Monica range in Southern California. Mt. San Bernardino with his crown of snow towers in the distance; Mt. Baldy with his white head bald almost the entire year round, we perceive even farther west; and magnificent old San Gorgonio rears his stately crest far above all the surrounding peaks. This is one of the most beauteous spots in Southern California. The vast depths of that great natural amphitheater near Redlands and Riverside as viewed from Smiley Heights form a panorama gorgeous beyond description, with every color of the rainbow brilliantly present, a marvelous thrilling picture painted against the landscape far and near: marvelous in its splashes of purples and greens and pinks and orange-reds against the somber background of the grand old mountains; thrilling in the vastness of the limitless panorama spread out before us on all sides, as we stand here on Smiley Heights gazing into the great cañons below, which seem to magnetize us against our will and to draw us down into their depths by the sheer force of distance immeasurable. Truly a fit setting for our little _Opuntia Covillei_, playing his humble part in all this gorgeous portraiture of plant and flower, mountain and valley and rocky cliff; and with the touch of the Master Artist he takes his modest place in the great aurora borealis of the desert. Bright yellow and nearly four inches long are his large beautiful blooms, toning into the green of the stigma lobes in a happy combination of Nature’s making, and forming, over the two- or three-foot stems with their pale blue-green joints or dull green pearlike appendages, a becoming aureole of gold, quite dazzling in the brilliant sunlight. Sometimes he grows in dense thickets several yards across and fringed with thick clusters of inch-long brown and yellowish white spines and spicules, sharp and needlelike, harshly repulsing the daring tourist who presumes to pluck his beautiful blossoms too rashly. Flapjack Prickly Pear (_Opuntia chlorotica_) _Southern California, Arizona, Lower California, Northern Mexico, New Mexico, and Nevada_