One more of the fierce Cholla group must claim our attention, bringing to a close our search for these cruel, relentless growths, awful to contemplate in many instances yet strangely enticing as well. It is a cultivated specimen of a low and typical Cane Cactus which grows wild in northern Arizona, New Mexico, and spreads north even into southern Utah and Colorado, thriving at altitudes from five to seven thousand feet in loamy soils of oak, juniper, and pine formations and high grassy lands. This is the “farthest north” for a Cholla to grow. One to two feet high, the shrubs form in rather pretty clumps of silvery glossy slender spines, golden flowers suffused with pink and green tinting, and purple joints on greenish stems. A characteristic cactus of more northern parts and named for Lieutenant A. W. Whipple, in charge of the Whipple Expedition of 1853 and 1854. This ends our long trek over sultry desert lands as we cross the boundary line into southeastern Arizona at the customs in Nogales, Mexico. [Illustration: CURSED CHOLLA; DEVIL CHOLLA (Opuntia Stanlyi)] [Illustration: JUMPING CHOLLA (Opuntia fulgida)] And so the greeters of the desert, advance guard of the cactus invasion from Mexico, see us depart now for a time from the mysterious land of the Fantastic Clan, wherein we have learned of the charm of color, and the strange devices of Nature in her scheme of Cholla growth; and where the fierce, uninviting heat of the desert fails to keep us from entering that domain of silence where the midday sun burns all to a crisp under the relentless bombardment of its energy, which after all gives alluring beauty to the wondrous cactus flowers; and where the cooler shades of evening loose the mild zephyrs that kiss our parched brows and gently lull us to sleep at night with moonbeams playing at random among the cañon shadows, gossamerlike and eerie in the ghostly light of the stars. And once again in fancy we behold these armored Cholla, silent fortresses of the desert, looming against the mountain sides, with their beautiful rainbows of gorgeous hue blossoming forth but to fade and die, never to appear anew in their shimmering colorful sheens of glory against background of sheaths and terrible thorns, the swords of the fierce Cholla group. Then comes the dawn. Slowly the eastern rim of the landscape is bathed in soft pearly light, haloed over the mountains. The night has passed and another day is on, and we, too, have passed on and left the strange alluring land of the weird Cholla group; but the beauty we have found out there among fierce relentless growths lingers on in the background of our conscious minds, and we wonder how it came there and why it is; after all is it not part of the glory that God has given us to use and to try to understand? The Cholla Group, or Cane Cacti (_Cylindropuntia_) How to identify and how they grow