account of the species and its numerous forms, I must 
refer to Engelmann’s works enumerated above, and from 
which the characters of this species are derived. Dr. 
Engelmann enumerates no fewer than fifty Opuntias, natives 
of the United States of America, of which Rafinesquit is 
the most widely distributed and, as might be expected, the 
most variable. It comprises five local forms, of which 
three are western and two eastern. The latter are var. 
microsperma, which has usually been confounded with 0. 
vulgaris, and var. grandiflora, a native of Texas. The 
plant here figured is no doubt the first of these, distinguished 
by its large flowers, which are often red in the centre, and 
few spines (which are sometimes entirely absent). 
The plant with which 0. Rafinesquii was so long con- 
founded is the O. vulgaris, the only American species north 
of Mexico with which Linnewus was acquainted; it is 
confined to the west of North America, east of the Alle- 
ghany Mountains, where it extends from Massachusetts 
to Florida, and is the eastern representative of Rafinesquii, 
which is only found to the westward of that range. 
» Engelmann distinguishes vulgaris from the latter plant by 
its smaller size, paler colour, small pulvilia, usual absence 
of spines, smaller flowers with less numerous parts, and 
especially by the short thick and more or less appressed 
leaves. 
O. Rafinesquii has been cultivated for many years at 
Kew, flowering annually all through the summer. It was 
no doubt one of the many contributions of Cacti received 
from the late Henry Shaw of St. Louis, the founder of the 
Shaw Botanical Gardens and School of. Botany in that 
city, and to whose munificence botanists owe the publica- 
tion of the collected works of G. Engelmann.—J. D. H. 
Fig. 1 and 2, Stamens; 3, style and stigmas ; 4 and 5, seeds :—all enlarged. 
