The Hen and Chicken is fo called from the numerous glo- 

 bular offsets which come out on (lender threads from every 

 part of the mother plant, and falling off^ take root and become 

 fo many diftincl; plants. The increafe is fo great in this way, 

 that the propagation by feeds becomes unneceffary, and there- 

 fore the plant may be kept for many years together without 

 fhewing any difpofition to throw up flowering ftems ; but if 

 the young offspring are conftantly taken off, and only one, or 

 at mod two or three of the rofettes, connected by larger 

 runners, are fuffered to remain, the plant will generally flower 

 in the courfe of the following fummer. 



The fpecies raoft nearly allied to, and perhaps hardly fufficiently 

 diftinft from this, is the hirtum ; Sempervivum fetalis fim- 

 briates fobolc patula, of Schmidel. Sempervivum foboli- 

 ferum is much more common with us than globiferum t and the 

 one cultivated by Miller, in 1773, probably belongs to the 

 former. 



