ALOE. 9 



riosity, that the gardener who possesses the plant an- 

 nounces 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 cen- 

 tury, 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. Thun- 

 berg says of the talipot-tree, that when it is on the point of 

 bursting forth from its leafy summit, the sheath which en- 

 velops 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 flowered, it made a great 

 noise ; meaning thereby, that whenever one of them flow- 

 ered in England, it was spread abroad as an uncommon 

 thing, and occasioned a great noise among the neighbouring 

 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 per- 

 fection varies with the climate. 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 longer in arriving 

 at perfection. The leaves of the American Aloe are five 

 or six feet long, 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 thou- 



* Wood's Zoography, vol. iii. 



