coast well up to the rocky slope of the sierras. It yields quantities of fruit, somewhat like tunas, but more woody and insipid; this fruit is seldom if ever used for human food, but is freely consumed by herbivores. Much less abundant than the cholla is the nopal, or prickly pear; and there are various other opuntias, often too slender to stand alone and intertwined with stiffer shrubs which lend them support, and many of these yield small berry-like tunas. Another characteristic cactus, widespread as the cholla and abundant in nearly all parts of Seriland save on the rocky slopes, is the okatilla (_Fouquiera splendens_). It consists of half a dozen to a score of slender, woody, and thorn-set branches radiating from a common root, usually at angles of 30° to 45° from the vertical, and ordinarily reaching heights of 10 to 20 feet. The pulp masses of the larger cacti, especially the saguaro, saguesa, pitahaya, and cina, are supported by woody skeletons in the form of vertical ribs coincident with the external flutings; within a few years after the death and decay of these desert monsters the skeletons weather out, and the vertical ribs form light and strong and approximately straight bars or shafts, valuable for many industrial purposes; while the slender arms of okatilla are equally valuable, in the fresh condition after removal of the spiny armament, and in the weathered state without special preparation. On many of the higher plain-slopes, especially in eastern Seriland, there are pulpy stemmed shrubs and bushes, sometimes reaching the dignity of trees, which present the normal aspect of exogenous perennials during life, but which are so spongy throughout as to shrink into shreds of bark-like debris shortly after death. These are the torotes of the Sonoran province—common torote (_Jatropha cardiophylla_), torote amarillo (_Jatropha spathulata_), torote blanco (_Bursera microphylla_), torote prieto (_Bursera laxiflora_), torotito (_Jatropha canescens_?), etc. These plants grow in the scattered and scraggy tufts characteristic of arid districts (a typical torote tuft appears in left foreground of figure 4); they are protected from evaporation by the usual glazed epidermis, and maintained by the water absorbed during the humid seasons; but they are thornless and are protected from animal enemies by pungent odors, and at least in some cases by toxic juices. Like various plants of the province they are measurably communal—indeed, the torotito appears to be dependent on union with an insect for reproduction, like certain yuccas, and like the cina and (in some degree at least) the saguaro and other cacti.