ANT ACACIAS AND ACACIA ANTS SAFFORD. 383 



by two illustrations of the hornlike spines, one of which is herewith 

 reproduced (fig. 1). The original figures were colored, showing the 

 thorns to be chestnut-brown. The drawings of the pinnately-com- 

 pound leaves were very crude, but the evidence furnished by the form 

 and color of the interlocking thorns is quite sufficient to identify the 

 plant described by Hernandez with similar plants in the United 

 States National Herbarium collected in the same locality, still known 

 as the Huasteca region of Mexico, a species described by the writer 

 under the name Acacia hernandesii, in honor of the explorer who first 

 called attention to it. 3 



These curious horn-bearing plants soon found their way to Europe, 

 and were cultivated in the greenhouses of botanical gardens. The 

 first species to be described botanically was one growing in the 

 garden of George Clifford, included by Linnaeus in 1737, in his 

 " Hortus Cliffortianus." It was afterwards found growing in its 

 native habitat, near Laguna Verde, in the mountains of Veracruz, 

 Mexico, in 1820, by the botanical explorer Christian Julius Wil- 

 helm Schiede and was described 10 years later under the name 

 Acacia spadicigera, which must be regarded as a synonym of Lin- 

 naeus's Acacia cornigera. Linnaeus's original type from the Clif- 

 ford garden is shown on plate 1. A photograph of Schiede's origi- 

 nal specimen in the Herbarium at Halle is shown on plate 4 by the 

 side of a branch from a living plant of the same species growing 

 in Washington. On plate 5 is shown Acacia hernandez'd of the 

 Huasteca lowlands, readily distinguished by its short-stemmed flower 

 spikes, which may be likened to ears of maize, with the microscopic 

 florets crowded on an elongated axis like grains of corn upon a cob. 



A third species (fig 2) differing from both Acacia hernandezii and 

 A. cornigera, in its much straighter yellow thorns, as well as in the 

 form of its inflorescence and of certain little stalked bracteoles which 

 protect the florets before they bloom, was collected by Schiede in 

 the State of Veracruz in 1820, and named Acacia sphaerocephala by 

 Schlechtendal and Chamisso. 4 



The next writer to call attention to the bull-horn acacias was 

 Thomas Belt, in his interesting work entitled " The Naturalist in 

 Nicaragua. " In the narrative of a journey, made in 1872, from the 

 hacienda of Olama to Matagalpa, Nicaragua, he writes as follows: 



One low tree, very characteristic of the dry savannahs, I have only incidentiy 

 mentioned before. It is a species of acacia, belonging to the section Gum- 

 miferae, with bipinnate leaves, growing to a height of 15 or 20 feet. The 

 branches and trunk are covered with strong curved spines, set in pairs, from 

 which it receives the name of the bull's-horn thorn, they having a very strong 

 resemblance to the horns of that quadruped. These thorns are hollow, and 



3 See Journ. Wash. Acad. Sciences 4 : 358. 1914. 

 *See Linnaea vol. 6, p. 594. 1830. 



