347 
its allies in European collections. The writer has been able to 
authenticate only the following :— 
(i.) 1811, Royal Gardens, Kew; see Bot. Mag., t. 1522: 
(ii.) 1881 (January), Coimbra Gardens, Portugal; see 
specimens, drawing, and note, communicated by Dr. 
Henriques, in-Herb. Kew: 
(iii.) 1882, Experimental Garden, Port Ercole, Argentario 
Promo i i 
Gard. Chron., n.s. xix. (1883), p. 142, fig. 22. 
lant which flowered with Saunders about 1873 (see 
Refugium,t. 307) does not seem from Mr. Baker’s description to have 
een Aiton’s lurida. It was more probably A. Jacquiniana, Hook. 
(in Bot. Mag., t. 5097). In the Herbarium of the British Museum 
there is a sheet with three flowers on it which are referable perhaps 
to A. lurida, and on this is a note by one of Banks’ staff that the 
specimens came from Ball’s Pond (near Stoke Newington), and this 
would not improbably indicate an even earlier example than that at 
Kew of 1811. But on the same sheet there are other fragments 
that seem to belong to a different species, and besides this there 
exists yet another Agave which, though otherwise conspicuously 
distinct, has a perianth rather nearly resembling that of the true 
lurida, This species has indeed been taken for “ A. lurida, var. 
Jacquiniana” (1.e., A. Jacquiniana, Schultes ex Hooker), but is 
probably = A. miradorensis of Jacobi in Abh. Schles. Ges., 1869, 
p. 156, which again it is difficult to separate by the description 
from the earlier A. Desmettiana of the same author (Versuch., 
241), 
A drawing was made from the living specimen of 1811 by a 
contemporary artist, who for some inscrutable reason drew the eat 
tip as if it had no terminal spine, and this error, together with the 
peculiar colouring, has attached a shade of doubt to the illustration, 
which has now been dispelled by the flowering of the modern 
example, for the inflorescence proves to have been faithfully 
depicted. About two years later this drawing was submitted to 
Gawler, who learned from the younger Aiton that it was the 
A. lurida of his father and predecessor. Unluckily Gawler did 
not grasp the essential circumstance that Aiton’s lurida was horti-~ 
) variety being Miller’s A. Vera-Cruz, with which as 
5) . a 
