accord, except in not having the longer spine so stout 

 and so straight, as appears to be the case with that species. 

 Nothing short of good figures can illustrate the various 

 forms of the species in this intricate family. We have 

 cultivated the present individual for some years in the 

 collection at Kew, where it flowers in March and April. 



Descr. The plant is small, two inches high, three, or 

 three and a-half inches in diameter, globose, but remark- 

 ably depressed at the top, and even convex there, and 

 crowded with mammillae, with their woolly and spinous 

 areolae : the sides deeply and regularly costate, the sinuses 

 acute ; the costae prominent, very obtuse, sinuato-crenate, 

 about twenty in number. Areola woolly, sending out, in 

 a stellated direction, eight to ten, slender, acicular or seti- 

 form, spreading spines, with one longer and stronger, but 

 still slender, which is curved downwards. Flowers one 

 or two, generally from the border of the depressed vertex 

 or summit, large, handsome : the numerous spreading 

 petals yellow, with a dark-red streak down the centre. 

 The lower scales or calycine segments are villous. 





