Perhaps it is best to show how, even in Great Britain, all plants have many dangerous foes. The roots of trees are nibbled by mice, voles, and sometimes by swine. The bark is injured by cattle, roedeer, reddeer, fallowdeer, who tear the bark with their horns, and especially by rabbits and hares. The leaves are eaten by the same animals and also by horses, goats, sheep, etc. The young buds are attacked by squirrels, who also break off the leading shoots of certain firs when they happen to be in a playful mood. But it is in cultivated lands and in open, rather dry and arid country that one finds the most interesting weapons in the fights between plant and animal. It is in such places that some of the most beautiful and useful creatures have their home. The horse, ass, camel, goat, and sheep probably belong to those wonderful lands which border the great deserts of Africa and Asia. These animals have been obliged to travel far and fast, and to perfect their bodily strength in order to pick up a living. [Illustration: _Stereo Copyright, Underwood & Underwood_ _London and New York_ CULTIVATED BAMBOO IN A CHINESE PLANTATION These giant grasses are sometimes one hundred and twenty feet high and one foot in diameter. They at times grow at the rate of three feet per day, and are used for all sorts of purposes, such as scaffolding poles, flower-pots, as a vegetable, etc. etc.] They have been taught (perhaps we should say learnt) by the thorns and briers of the wilderness. The Cactus, Prickly Pears, or other succulent plants which belong to true deserts, are covered over with most curious and interesting spines. A row of little projections runs down each edge of the round fleshy stem. On each projection there is a rosette of spines. Sometimes these are long, slender, and diverging; in other cases they are short, stout, and curving over. Now imagine a guanaco in South America, or even a rat or mouse, which is perishing of thirst in the arid desert where such things are found. It will be seen that it is by no means easy for it to taste the water in the juicy stem, for even the thin muzzle of a rat could scarcely get between the thorns. Kerner describes how the wild asses in South America root up or try to split the Cacti with their hoofs to get at the juicy tissue of the unarmed lower parts. Yet they often receive dangerous wounds in doing so from the frightful spines of Melocactus[80] and others. [80] Kerner, _l.c._, vol. I, p. 447. It is very interesting to see a flock of Angora goats in South Africa attacking an Acacia. The kid is a pretty, white, fluffy little creature, with the most meek, mild, and innocent expression. Yet it is a quarrelsome little brute. In a few minutes an Acacia will be despoiled, broken, and robbed of its foliage by a flock of them, although it bristles all over with long spines, of which there are a pair at the base of each leaf.