Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 August 1881 — Flora and Fauna of the Desert. [ARTICLE]

Flora and Fauna of the Desert.

Bunch grass, as gray as the sand it self, dwarf evergreens, nearly black in color, and cactus, with a few wild flowers, are almost the only botanical contribution to the changing picture. No trees grow on the "desert. The cactus family, the most eccentric of plants, makes this region its home. The first to be seen coming from the East is of the variety most familiar to Eastern hothouses, shaped like mittens upon extended human hands, tlmmblcss, and bordered with sharp spines. A commoner variety in the desert is of a vinelike character, clinging somewhat closely to the ground and putting forth branelies it angles as eccentric as those of the letters of the Chinese alphabet. East of L’ucson this variety takes to itself a, trunk or stem as odd in appearance as itself, blilCK, leafless, branching rtruol.ike a stag-horn, and bearing its vineike burden upon each terminal point. L’lie most singular variety of the cactus .rows near Tucson, where a grove numlering several hundred individual plants s seen upon a barren, stony hillside, t shoots up round and straight like a elegrapli pole, the largest specimens attaining nearly two feet in circumfernce, by twelve to eighteen feet in ■.might, often without branches, but (exierally putting forth two shoots like lie elbows and connecting links of a dove-pipe. It bears upon its upper end small tuft or flower. Bo great a aisroportion between stem and flower is irobably found in no other plant. The rank is covered with regular rows of varts and spines. The Spanish bayonet occupies tliou•anils of acres and has its share of ec■entricities. When young its long ongh bayonets pc?int in every direction s if guarding some precious fruit withit its worthless stump. Later all but irose pointing upward and downward all oti - , leaving a band iij l its middle, giving it the appearance o( a le of straw tied up and /ready for the larvest wagon. Individuals of the /ariety send up a shoot from the center our or five feet, like a bamboo, bearing it the top a pleasing cluster of small /lowers. —New York Tribune.

[From the Fort Wayne (Ind.) Sentinel.] When about twelve years old, said Mr. Geisman, of the Globe Chop House, to our representative, I met with an accident with a horse, by which my skull was fractured, and ever since I have suttered with the most excruciating rheumatic pains. Of late; I applied St. Jacobs Oil, which has given me almost total relief.