ME. J. G. BAKER ON ALOINEJ3 AND TUCCOIDEJB. 149 



are characterized by a polyphyllous perianth, and of which the 

 leaves are never thick and fleshy, there are nearly fifty species, all 

 of which belong exclusively to America. 



Of the Aloes, one species, Aloe vera or vulgaris, belongs to the 

 Mediterranean region, and was one of the first plants that was 

 definitely individualized by writers on natural history. By the 

 beginning of the seventeenth century about twenty of the Cape 

 species had already been introduced into European gardens. 

 Most of these are well figured and described in the ' Praeludia ' 

 of Commelinus, published at Amsterdam in the year 1703, and 

 a few others are noticed in the ' Hortus Medicus Amstelodamen- 

 sis ' of the same author, and the ' Hortus Elthamensis ' of Dille- 

 nius. Linnseus seems to have paid very little attention to Aloes. 

 In his herbarium the tribe is solely represented by two leafless 

 racemes ; and in his ' Species Plantarum ' he reduces the number 

 of species of genuine Aloes to seven, massing under the name of 

 Aloe perfoliata several which his predecessors had clearly charac- 

 terized and distinguished. Philip Miller knew them better ; and 

 in the sixth edition of his ' Gardener's Dictionary,' published in 

 1771, names and notices twenty-two species. In the first volume 

 of the ' Encyclopedic,' eighteen years later, Lamarck worked them 

 up afresh, but adds very little ; and this is also the case with 

 "Willdenow ten years later. Thunberg, who did so much for 

 Cape botany, also attended to the Aloes very little, and his synop- 

 sis of them is poor and brief. Between 1790 and 1800 a great 

 many new species were introduced into Europe by Masson ; and 

 in 1801 Haw r orth published a monograph in the seventh volume 

 of the 'Transactions' of our own Society, in which he raises 

 the number of species to sixty. In 1812 Haworth again worked 

 them up more fully in his ' Synopsis Plantarum Succulentarum,' 

 in which he adopts Duval's two new genera Gasteria and Hatvor- 

 tliia. In his ' Supplementum ' of 1819 and ' Bevisiones ' of 

 1821 a few new species are added. Between 1820 and 1830 

 Bowie introduced a large number of new Cape species. These 

 were cultivated at Kew and named and described by Haworth 

 from time to time in Taylor's ' Philosophical Magazine.' Of 

 most of these introductions of Bowie's there are original coloured 

 drawings in the Kew collection which have never been published ; 

 and these I have often utilized here. The great cultivator of 

 Aloes upon the continent over the half-century extending from 

 1810 to 1860 was Prince Salm-Eeifferschied-Dyck. His ' Cata- 



