the substance called Caffer-bread, Thunberg tells us, is “ the me- 
dulla or pith (in other words, the cabbage, or young unformed 
leaves, while yet within the substance of the top of the trunk), 
from which the Hottentots contrive to prepare their bread. For 
this purpose, after scooping out the pith, they bury it in the 
earth, and leave it there for the space of two months to rot, after 
which they knead it and make it into a cake, which, in their 
_ usual slovenly and filthy manner, they slightly bake in the em- 
bers. I observed that the tree stood in dry and sterile places, 
between stones, and grew slowly.” ‘The seeds are also roasted 
and eaten. 
Our object now is to give the best description we can of the 
species under consideration. 
Descr. The individual from which our drawing was taken 
exhibits a ¢rwuk which, like the ‘“ Black-boys”’ (Xanthorrhea) of 
Australia, had been blackened by the fires of the natives, is six 
and a half feet high,* erect, nearly cylindrical throughout, with 
a circumference of three and a half feet, the whole presenting on 
the surface, by the persisting bases of the fallen leaves, a kind 
of tessellated work, a compact tissue of areoles of a somewhat 
transversely rhomboidal form, all coming to the same level, so 
that no one projects beyond the rest. Near the summit the bases 
of the recently fallen leaves are more prominent, and give a tu- 
berculated character; all appear glabrous, in nowise villous or 
squamulose. Forming a beautiful crown on the scaly summit, 
arise the /eaves, thirty or forty or more in number, spreading in 
all directions, three to three feet four inches long, more or less 
recurved, the outer ones for nearly their whole length, the rest 
more especially so at the apex, where they have a somewhat scor- 
poid character. The pefiole is six or eight inches long, somewhat 
terete, the upper side however nearly plane, and having a sort of 
ridge in the centre, so that a transverse section (with the some- 
what keeled back) is obsoletely four-angled, one angle (the back) 
more rounded than the rest, and the same form runs through the 
rachis, as shown in our Fig. 1. These leaves are of a very harsh, 
rigid, and coriaceous character, lanceolate, pinnated for the 
whole length with numerous pizza, four to six inches long, five 
lines broad in the widest part; these are somewhat obliquely set 
on to the margins formed by the nearly plane upper surface of 
the rachis, and are sessile, the very base spreading or decurrent 
both above and below into a kind of foot, which is paler-coloured 
than the leaf or rachis; these pinne are alternate, they rarely 
spread horizontally, but are erecto-patent with regard to the 
rachis, of a linear-lanceolate form, of a dark green colour, the 
lower ones, which are broader than the rest, ending in a strong 
mucronate point, the rest have a much shorter and less sharp 
point, which turns back (uncinate); the upper surface is the 
* Another of our specimens has the trunk eight feet high all but two inches. 
