it exhibited symptoms of internal injury. The inside became a 
putrid mass, and the crust, or shell, fell in with its own weight. 
Other lesser ones were already and are still in the collection, 
and the one, from which one small flowering portion is repre- 
sented of the natural size, weighs 713 lbs. ; its height is four 
feet six inches ; its longitudinal circumference ten feet nine 
inches, and its transverse ditto eight feet seven inches ; its ribs 
amount to forty-four. All our plants were procured with great 
labour, and sent many hundred miles, over the roughest country 
in the world, from San Luis Potosi, Mexico, to the coast, for 
shipping, and presented to the Royal Gardens by Fred. Staines, 
Esq. It flowers through a good part of the year, but in com- 
parison with the bulky trunk the blossoms are quite incon- 
siderable and void of beauty. 
Dxscr. Six to nine feet high: in shape elliptical, copiously 
angled, glaucous-green, the summit crowned with a dense mass of 
tawny wool :* furrows deep but narrow, ridges forty to fifty, waved 
at the rather sharp edge, scarcely tubercled. Areole large, ap- 
proximate, pale brown, forming a deep depression, so crowded 
as almost to touch one another, not woolly. Spines from the 
hollows of their areole four, strong, subulate: upper one the 
largest, erect, three lower ones patent, almost recumbent, all 
palish brown, darker near the base, strong and sharp, straight. 
Flowers’ copious from among the woolly mass at the summit of 
the plant. Ovary oblong or fusiform, three-fourths of it exserted 
from the wool, and covered itself by a dense mass of wool of 
the same colour; towards the summit are several scattered 
thickish bristles or soft spines. Petals numerous, spreading, 
yellow, oblong-spathulate, acute, serrated: innermost series an 
inch or an inch and a half long. Stamens very numerous, 
crowded. Anther small, orange. Style sunk among the 
stamens. Stigma of about twelve, elongated, filiform, wavy 
lobes. The corolla remains long in a withered state, and old 
flowers are not easily deciduous. W. J. H. 
Cuur. The division of Cactee to which this large species 
belongs are natives chiefly of Mexico, inhabiting dry rocky 
places and apparently deriving little nourishment from the 
ground: when we received this plant we were surprised to see 
* This wool covers the whole crown of the plant, and is a few inches deep, 
and we are much mistaken if it is not a tuft of this substance, taken from an 
Lchinocactus Visnaga, which constitutes that botanical curiosity from Mexico, 
long in the possession of the late Mr. Lambert (now at the British Museum), 
known under the name of the “ Muff Cactus.” A small quantity taken off the 
plant may, by handling and admitting air within the staple, be distended to a 
considerable size. An entire mass from a good sized plant, thus treated, might 
be made to assume the cylindrical form of the specimen alluded to. 
