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EUCALYPTUS TREES, 114 
Redeemer’s time to this age, because four centuries 
effected on these Giant Lilies but little change. 
Welwitchia here, like in rainless Damaraland, might 
grow in our desert sands as one of the most wonder- 
ful of plants, its only pair of leaves being cotyledo- 
nous and lasting well- nigh through a century. Or 
associate in your ideas with these one of the medici- 
nal Tree Aloes of Namaqua, or one of the Poison Eu- 
phorbias, never requiring pluvial showers (Euphorbia 
grandidens), some as high as a good-sized two-storied 
dwelling-house ; transfer to them also Cereus senilis, 
thirty feet high, which, with all its attempts to look 
venerable, only suceeds to be grotesque ; add to these 
extraordinary forms such Lily-trees as the Fourcroya 
longeva, with a stem of forty feet and an inflorescence 
of thirty feet, whereas Agave Americana, Agave 
Mexicana and allied species, while they quietly pass 
through the comparatively short space of time allotted 
to their existence, weave in the beautiful internal 
economy of their huge leaves the threads which are 
to yield the tenacious Pita-cords, so much in quest for 
the rope-bridges of Central America. 
Some of the Echinocacti extend as far south as 
Buenos Ayres and Mendoza, and would introduce 
into many arid tracts of Victoria, together with the 
almost numberless succulents of South Africa, a great 
ornamental attraction, which horticultural enterprise 
might turn to lucrative account; just like our native 
showy plants will become objects of far higher com- 
mercial importance than hitherto has been attach- 
ed to them. The columns of Cereus Peruvianus rise 
sometimes to half a hundred feet; some Cactese are 
in reality the vegetable fountains of the desert. Such 
