AGAVE RIGIDA — AGAVE ANGUSTIFOLIA 275 



tinued 



synonym of the second 



toothed 



/3 



says is not his own Furcraea rigida^ or the equivalent A. 

 rigida of Miller. As he accounts for all of Aiton's other forms 



of Agave 



americana B. which he 



Karatto 



must 



'foil 



lurida B 



Miller did not give diagnoses in the earlier editions of his 

 Dictionary, and there seems no way of learning the characters 

 of his species except by their collocation and by reference to 

 works in which others had described plants under the same 

 polynominals, — in connection with his own diagnoses first in- 

 troduced into the seventh edition, Joannes Commclinus,t 

 who must be conceded to have known the plants of the Beau- 

 mont garden, on which rested the Kiggelarius polynominals 

 taken up by Miller, had pictured the narrow-leaved less 

 glaucous \^era Cruz aloe which Miller took as the prototype 

 of his Agave rigida, a generation before the latter wrote. His 

 plate, here reproduced on a reduced scale, shows some leaves 

 quite entire, others armed nearly throughout, and still others 

 toothed from the base to or about the middle. The some- 

 what glaucous lanceolate leaves were 2 X 18-24 in. (5 X 45- 



channeled 



except 



black somewhat 



spme at least 2 X 10 mm 



Furcraea of the Demouliniana series than for those of an Agave. 



Such a plant, not fully described in either diagnosis, and 



broader-leaved, but comprising the original marginal char- 



* After quoting the Miller diagnosis^ differing from his own in reading 



'*foliis . . • integerrimis," he says "nee Agave lurida /9 Hort. kew. 

 ed. 2, V. 2. p. 302: sed in horto Kewense pulchre crescit," — the "sed" 

 being ameliorated into '*et/' by manuscript correction, in a copy of the 



book presented by him to Treviranus, and now in the Engelmann library 



at the Missouri Botanical Garden. 



f Hort. Med. Amstelodam. Rar. . , Plant. . , Descr. et 

 Icon. 2 : 33. pL 17, (1701). 



