Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 September 1895 — A Wonderful Adaptation. [ARTICLE]

A Wonderful Adaptation.

A friend of mine, who was for several years in the service on the Western plains, gave me a very interesting account of the wonderful adaptation of the plant and animal life of that section to their surroundings. I have never seen it laid down in .the books: “Down in the sandy, arid plains of Western Texas, New Mexico, and Arizoua, the cacti are the only plants that remain green and flourishing in ilie summer season. As they are succulent they would be greedily eaten by the herbiverous animals, such as the wild cat and deer tribe, and would soon be exterminated. “To guard themselves against this wholesale destruction they have developed a perfect chevaux-de-frise of sharp, barbed spines, that branch out in every direction, forming such a complete protection that no large animal can get at the body of the plant.” But the really marvelous fact, the truth of which my friend affirms, is the adaptive imitatiou of one of the small animals to these plants. “The horned lizard, or horned toad as it is commonly misnamed, is abundant. As it would be an easy prey of carnivorous birds, it, also, has been forced to protect itself, by a cunning fraud. It has developed spines on its head and all up and down its back and tail, in exact imitation of the spines of the cacti. And so closely h as it carried the imitation that the spines all over the body actually blossom out during the season the cacti are in bloom, the flowers taking on the shape and color of the species of cacti among which the lizard lives. most beautiful sight I ever saw,” friend, “was on a bright morning when, there was a light dew. The sandy plain was covered with the little dusky, brown animals, darting about, each in full bloom,' the deeply tinted flowers sparkling with the dew drops. Now they form great masses of color, then scatter in all directions, crossing and recrossing, a brilliant flashing of color like an Arctic aurora. It was a living, breathing, animated flower garden, to be seen nowhere else on earth. It were well worth a trip to the far West just for one hour of a scene like that.”