124 NAT. ORDER. EUPHORBIACE.E. 



Thi.s extensive order, (according to Dr. Lindley,) which does not 

 probably contaia less than 1500 species, either described or unde- 

 scribod, exists in the greatest profusion and abundance in equinoctial 

 America, where about three-eighths of the whole number have been 

 found, sometimes in the form of large trees, frequently of bushes, still 

 more usually of diminutive weeds, and occasionally of deformed, 

 leafless succulent plants, resembling the Cacti in their port, but dif- 

 fering from them in every other particular. In the Western world 

 they gradually diminish as they recede from the Equator, so that not 

 above fifty species are known in North America, of wiiich a very 

 small number reach as far as Canada. In the old world the known 

 tropical proportion is much smaller, arising probably from the species 

 of India and equinoctial Africa not having been described with the 

 same care as those of America — not above an eighth having been 

 found in tropical Africa, including tlie Islands, and a sixth being 

 perhaps about the proportion in India. A good many species inhabit 

 the Cape, where they generally assume a succulent Iiabit ; and 

 there are almost one hundred and twenty species in Europe — inclu- 

 ding the basin of the Mediterranean — -of these, sixteen only are 

 found in Great Britain, and seven in Sweden. 



This genus, which is so extensive, was named in honor of Eu- 

 phorbus. Physician to Juba, King of Mauritania. The different kinds 

 of which are so remarkable for the copious acrid, milky juice, in 

 some constituting caoutchouc. No less than two hundred and nine 

 species are known to possess this property, and numerous undes- 

 cribed ones are known to exist in our Herbarium. Many of them 

 recommend themselves to cultivation by the strangeness of their 

 forms, especially among the more succulent kinds — a few by the 

 rich colors, not of the flowers indeed, but of the bractcas and floral 

 leaves. The one in figure, though it cannot vie with the Euphorbia 

 splcndcns or Eiqihorbia piinicea, both of which bear such rich scarlet 

 bracteas, is yet well deserving a place in every green-house, from the 

 deep blood-color of its bracteas and floral leaves, wh'cli present a 



