mediate between Cereus and Opuntia ; having the filiform style and 
habit of the former, with the tubeless flowers of the latter. The bony, 
compact, central mass of seeds, (not diffused through the flesh, but dis- 
tinct and separate,) is different from any thing I have observed in either 
of these genera: but the number of species which have fallen under my 
observation, is far too limited to justify more than a suggestion whether 
this character may prove corroborative of Professor De Canpo.ur’s 
idea that the present plant with its allies may hereafter form a distinct 
Genus. 
Descr. Stems several, cylindrical, scarcely erect without some sup- 
port when full grown: the main one six feet high or more, about two 
inches in diameter throughout, with a few, distant, erect or ascending, 
thickish branches, placed irregularly, subdivided; when young, rather 
club-shaped, always very obtuse: the whole of a dark dull green 
(except the lower part of the stem, which is ash-coloured or brownish,) 
and thickly armed with fine, sharp, but not very long, pale or white, 
finally divaricating sprnes, growing in fascicles of two or three on the 
branches, five or six on the stem, out of the top of each of the oblong or 
subpyriform tubercles, which are arranged spirally and quincuncially 
with beautiful regularity round the branches. At the base of the spines. 
is a large, diffuse tuft of very short, white, cottony bristles, filling up 
the channel or hollow above the top of each of the tubercles. Leaves 
deciduous, half an inch long, cylindrical, acute, like those of some 
Sedums. Flowers several together just below the ends of the branches, 
rather small and inconspicuous, about an inch in diameter, scarlet. 
Tube none. Petals short and erect, forming a sort of upright coronet, 
about half an inch high, at the top of the large, spirally tubercled ger- 
men, remote from the pistil; in seldom more than two rows; the outer. 
row more fleshy, narrow, acute, closing over the inner ones in the bud 
in a beautifully regular, rose-like or stellate manner ; ¢nner row thinner, 
much larger and broader, rounded or retuse. Stamens numerous, in- 
curved. Pistil an inch long. Style slender, of nearly equal diameter 
throughout, or not conspicuously swollen downwards as in the true 
Opuntia, pale green, hollow and pinkish within. Sézgma just over- 
topping the anthers, of about eight, erect, linear-lanceolate, or oblong, 
acute, pale green lobes. Germen large, spirally tubercled and setaceo- 
x Hae like the stem, but the tubercles are much shorter and broader ; 
oblong-obovate, deeply umbilicate at the top. Ovary containing many 
ovules, placed high up adjoining the bottom of the cup-like hollow of the 
germen. Fruit oval, subtruncate at each end, with the hollow at the 
top remarkably deep ; about two inches long and one_across ; pale yel- 
lowish-green, generally more or less discoloured with pale ashy brown, 
seemingly from some disease of the epidermis, the tubercles obsolete, or 
as if worn down into broad, flat, rhomboidal areolz, as well as the tufts 
of bristles. Tesh hard, pale-greenish, insipid, but disagreeably viscous 
with a nauseous, fishy smell. Seeds roundish-angular, much more 
convex than usual, or even globose, but of all shapes from compression, 
very closely ae into a hard, dense, bony, compact mass in the 
centre of the fruit, as large as a small marble ; each seed about two or 
three lines in diameter. Rev. J. T. Lowe. 
Fig. 1. Lower part of the Stem. 2. Upper part of ditto. 8. Vertical Section of the 
Germen and Flower, through the Pistil and Deere. 4. Part of the Style iad Stigees, 
split » 5, Leaf, 6. Seed, 7. Diminished sketch of .—Fig. 
shed. sketch of the whole plant.—Fig. 4—6 
