believe it to be one that has been very seldom seen in 
bloom in this country, if ever, since the time of Dillenius. It 
is not figured in Monsieur Decandolle’s work on Succulent 
Plants. The flower was entirely decayed before we could 
find an opportunity of inspecting it for description. 
The following version of the character of Cacrus Opun- 
tia (in which Tuna, and many other apparently distinct 
species, have been included as varieties of each other) froin 
Monsieur Decandolle's work may serve as an outline of the 
more general characteristics of the species of the division of 
the genus to which our plant belongs. 
Stem flattened, jointed, joints sometimes ovate, some- 
times oval, sometimes oblong, obtuse, lower ones ash- 
coloured, somewhat woody, nearly cylindrical, and scarcely 
separated at the junctures, upper ones herbaceous, fleshy, 
beset with tubercles disposed in a quincuncial order; from 
every tubercle are produced short pencils of thick hair 
or bristles, and fascicles of long thorns, which are either 
setaceous or subulate, white or yellow, hard, sharp-pointed, 
and prove abortive in various proportions. Leaves issuing 
out at the tubercles below the thorns, one to each tubercle, 
shaped like those of the Stone-crop, caducous, small, round, 
pointed, green or slightly purpled. Flowers from the upper 
edge of the terminal joints, solitary or many together, large, 
yellow, sessile. Calyx growing on the crown of the ger- 
men, divided into many leaflets at the top: leaflets flat, 
ovately round, resembling the outer petals and scarcely 
distinct from them. Petals of the corolla longer than the 
calycine leaflets, standing upon the calyx or the margin of 
the germen, for we may express it which way we will, in 
several ranks, cuneate, obtuse, sometimes emarginate, the 
middle nerve terminating in a short mucro or dagger-point. 
Stamens numerous, inserted at the same point as the petals, 
in several rows. Filaments filiform, upright, long: anthers 
inserted at the base, oval, yellow, bilocular: pollen yellow. 
Germen inferior or connate with the calyx, turbinate, green 
on the outside, beset with pencilled thorny turbercles like 
the stem. Style white, upright, thicker above the base, 
tapered at the top, generally hollow, cylindrical: stigmas 
8-9- (in the present species 6-)rayed, thick, viscous, obtuse. 
Berry (something like a fig, whence the English name of 
“ Indian-fig”) fleshy, ovoid, large, purple, one-celled, with 
an ovate polyspermous loculament: seeds numerous, small, 
affixed round about to the wall of the loculament, brown, 
reniform or kidney-shaped. 
