Mr. Ha worth's Description of new Succulent Plants. S^S 



genus Gasteria. This however was, and even still remains, 

 an unrivalled figure of the Gasteria carinata. 



In 1759, the well-known Dr. (afterwards Sir John) Hill, of 

 " voluminous memory," published his Hartus K&wensis (the 

 first public list of a Garden, now the richest in the known 

 world), in which he gives but twelve species of his genus Aloe, 

 one of which afterwards became the Aletris uvaria, and latterly, 

 the type of the genus Tritoma : and one other, the Agave vir- 

 ginica of Authors. And of Sir John's ten remaining Aloes, 

 only one (his Aloe disticha) belongs to the genus Gasteria. 



Nevertheless it must not be forgotten, that although Sir 

 John Hill enumerated but twelve species of Aloe; Miller, in 

 the last edition of his Dictionary, had published the year be- 

 fore (1768), what he considered as 23 species of Aloe; of which 

 however, one is the above-mentioned Tritoma uvaria, and an- 

 other the aforesaid Agave virginica. And of the remaining 

 twenty-one, three only belong to Gasteria, the subject of our 

 present Decade ; viz. No. 13, Aloe linguiforme (melius lingui- 

 formis); No. 20, Aloe verrucosa; and No. 21, the above- 

 mentioned Aloe carinata. 



Prior to that period, Linnaeus had published, in 1764, the 

 second edition of his Sj)ecies Plantarum, enumerating in it 

 eight species of Aloe only ; and one of these was Tritoma 

 uvaria; a remarkable proof this, of the inferiority of his judge- 

 ment to that of Dillenius and Miller, — on those subjects only 

 perhaps. And yet, like them, he had recently seen the then 

 matchless Gardens of the Dutch. On another occasion he 

 exclaimed, " Vidi equidem, vidi his oculis puerilibus olim, nee 

 res fallit." 



Aloe disticha is the only species which Linnaeus gave in 

 the year 1764, which belongs to the genus Gasteria; but it 

 must not be concealed, that he distinctly separates it into 

 three marked varieties, two of which form two sections in the 

 present Essay; and the third, by the best editor of the subse- 

 (juent edition of the same work of Linngeus of 1764, became 

 Willdenow's genus Rhijndodendron ! 



Prior to this asra, however, it should be stated that Boer- 

 haave (the greatest physician of the time, and of whom the wri- 

 ter's uncie,Dr.Hardy, was the last surviving pupil) iiad figured 

 one species belonging to Gasteria, and described three others. 

 And that Couuneliiie and TilH had figured two each; al- 

 though Muiiting in 1680, in his History of Aloes, the Aloi- 

 duriiim, had not given one. 



In the year 1789 the first edition of Aiton's Hortus Kexonisis 

 appeared, in three volumes octavo,— a work which for its accu- 



New Series. Vol. 2. No. 11. Nov. 1827. 2 Y racy 



