REMARKS ON THE ALOE. 209 



possesses the plant announces it in the public papers, and builds a 

 platform round it for the accommodation of the spectators. The 

 popular opinions, that the Aloe flowers but once in a century, and 

 that its blooming is attended with a noise like the report of a cannon, 

 are equally without foundation. Some other plants are said to blow 

 with this explosion. Thunberg says of the Talipot-tree, that when 

 it is on the point of bursting forth from its leafy summit, the sheath 

 which envelops the flower is very large, and when it bursts makes 

 an explosion like the report of a cannon. 



Miller suggests a curious and not improbable origin of this error 

 with regard to the Aloe. " I suppose," says he, " the rise of this 

 story might proceed from some persons saying, when one of these 

 plants floAvered, it made a great noise; meaning thereby, that when- 

 ever one of them flowered in England, it was spread abroad as an 

 uncommon thing, and occasioned a great noise among the neighbour- 

 ing inhabitants ; most of whom usually repair to see it, as a thing 

 that rarely happens, and as a great curiosity." The fact is, that the 

 time which this plant takes to come to perfection varies with the cli- 

 mate. In hot countries, where they grow fast, and expand many 

 leaves every season, they will flower in a few years ; but in colder 

 climates, where their growth is slow, they will be much louger in 

 arriving at perfection. The leaves of the American Aloe are five or 

 six feet long, and from six to nine inches broad, and three or four 

 thick. 



Millar mentions one of these plants in the garden of the King of 

 Prussia, that was forty feet high ; another in the 'royal garden at 

 Friedricksberg in Denmark, two-and-twenty feet high, which had 

 nineteen branches, bearing four thousand flowers; and a third in the 

 botanic garden at Cambridge, which, at sixty years of age, had never 

 borne flowers. He specifies some others, remarkable for the number 

 of their flowers, but does not mention the age of any one at the time 

 of flowering. 



" With us," says Rousseau, " the term of its life is uncertain ; and 

 after having flowered, it produces a number of offsets, and dies." 



Brydone, speaking of the approach to the city of Agrigentum, says, 

 " The road on each side is bordered by a row of exceeding large Ame- 

 rican Aloes ; upwards of one-third of them being at present in full 



