witJi observations upon the JManagement of Cactuses. 333 



dressed to M. Turpiii, " was originally from Buenos Ayres:* 

 a French sea captain brought two of the plants in 1827; one of 

 them was given to one of his friends employed in the Bureaux 

 de la douane, [custom-house,] the other to another of his friends, 

 a captain like himself, who sent it to, or exchanged it with, a gar- 

 dener of Ingouville. A short time after, this gardener made two 

 transverse sections of his plant, and sold me the superior part, 

 which, having readily rooted, gave me flowers in abundance, 

 and of tolerable size.f 



" The inferior and truncated portion remained in the hands of 

 the gardener, and produced no flowers; but, in the way of in- 

 demnification, he obtained, instead of flowers, at least thirty 

 eyes, which developed themselves in so many distinct offsets, 

 a«d could be easily separated from the parent plant. The plant 

 restored to the person employed in the custom-house, attracted 

 (by the beauty of its flowers,) the attention of an English gar- 

 dener, who stated that he had not seen this species in England, 

 and who made very advantageous offers to obtain it, and by the 

 force of his solicitations they gave him the superior part in ex- 

 change for very beautiful plants which he sent from London. 

 The inferior part remained with M. Bouthiller, an able horti- 

 culturist of Havre, and has produced at this time some small 

 plants, (as in the case of the gardener at Ingouville,) but not so 

 abundantly." 



This account probably refers to the introduction of this spe- 

 cies to France alone — as we find, in the text annexed to a figure 

 of it, in the Botanical Register, t. 1707, that it was presented 

 to the London Horticultural Society some years previous to 

 1S34, by Sir John Lubbock, who procured it from INIexico. As 

 it is figured, however, under the name of E. Eyriesii, which 

 name, we infer, from M. Turpin's communication, was given by 

 him, and as Dr. Lindley states that he does not find mention of 

 this "remarkable species" in the treatises of either jNIartius, 

 Link and Otto, or De Candolle, it may be an error of his; and 

 possibly it found its way into the British collections through the 

 English gardener who purchased the plant mentioned in the his- 

 tory of the species above. 



"At the moment," says M. Turpin, "that the last sheet of 

 my dissertation upon the cactuses went to press, I received from 

 M. le Chevalier Soulange Bodin a volume of the Transactions 

 of the Prussian Horticultural Society, (vol. 6th,) published at 



* He thinks also of the Island of Madeira. 



t This operation ought to engage the attention of horticulturists, and 

 induce thein to nudtiply this most singular and beautiful of all cactuses. 

 The melocactus is very rare in collections, but by sacrificing some, by 

 cutting them transversely, maternal plants may be obtained from the 

 inferior moiety. 



