of the Genus Aloe. 3 
mean the utter impracticability of their ever appearing in a 
hortus siccus ; at least in any cognizable shape. 
Impressed with these sensations, and a natural early-planted 
love of the succulent department of botany, and of gardening in 
all its branches; I have long collected and cultivated, and with 
unremitting assiduity still continue to collect and cultivate, all 
the Aloes and other succulent plants which it is possible to pro- 
cure. Fifteen years ago with ardour I commenced the pleasing 
task; and the observations I have now the satisfaction of sub- 
mitting to the Linnean Society, I give as the result of all the 
experience I have acquired on this subject from that period to the 
present time. 
In the beginning and middle of the late century, when the ma- 
nagement of green-house and hot-house plants was in its infancy ; 
when collections of exotics were neither so numerous nor so exten- 
sive as at present ; not only succulent plants in general, but those 
of the genus Aloe in particular, were held in the highest repute, 
both in Britain and on the continent, but more especially in 
Holland. 
This arose partly from the smallness of the collections of those 
times, and partly from the well-known facility with which plants 
of this description are usually managed and kept. Besides, the 
strange and impressive forms assumed by them^so widely different 
from the other branches of the vegetable kingdom) at those periods, 
from the circumstance of novelty alone, attracted the attention 
of botanists and gardeners more than they can now be expected 
to do. That indeed was the golden age of the succulent plants. 
In this country, Bradley, by his well known Decades ; and Dille- 
nius, who with matchless skill exhausted the subject as far as then 
known; and Miller, by his celebrated Dictionary, incorporating 
with unusual facility all their knowledge with his own, and with 
B 2 that 
