C 38 ] 



arcendis praedonibus, totum folium spinosum fy filamentosum est 

 nostratibus Naeldendraet, succus ex calice est edulis et nutrit ut 

 rapa." 



Mekia or Makian is a volcanic [island about half a degree 

 north, of the Equator in 127 E. Long., the most southerly 

 of the Ternate group, the original Moluccas or Spice Islands. 

 In 1605 the Dutch expelled the Portuguese from the Moluccas, 

 and in 1664 the Spaniards who had occupied Tidore sur- 

 rendered that also. In the meantime the colony on Makian 

 had been destroyed and scattered by a great eruption and 

 earthquake in 1646, but the island was reoccupied after a 

 few years, only to be laid waste again some twenty-five years 

 later. We know that there were two ports on the South Sea 

 coast of New Spain for trade with the Philippines and 

 Moluccas, and that ships were built at one of these expressly 

 for the South Sea navigation ; so that plants from Mexico might 

 easily find their way to the East Indian Archipelago in the 

 17th century, but it is remarkable that Valentyn (" Amboyna" 

 Dordrecht, 1726) makes no allusion to the Agave though he 

 includes in his List of native and cultivated Trees and Plants 

 the Lidah Boaya (i.e. Alligator's Tongue) or true Aloe. 



Rumpf (Herb. Amb. 7. pp. 271 27 b, tab. XGJV) gives 

 a full account of Lidah Boaya as " Sempenivum majus indicum " 

 which he introduced into Amboyna in 1661, and notes that it 

 differs from the Aloe americana of C I us/us ' that being j more akin 

 to Panda-ruts'. " Sempervivum" it may be noted, was a name 

 applied, it is said, to the true Aloe by the traders of Antwerp, 

 who often kept a plant hanging from their roofs as a curiosity. 

 Burmann the editor of the Serb. Amb. adds a later note 

 by Rumphius dealing very fully with another succulent plant 

 that was first brought to his notice in a deserted plantation 

 (near Amboyna apparently) in 1697, but was spreading in the 

 Colony. The natives called it Nanas utan, i.e. ' woodland (or 

 wild) pineapple,' or Nana boaya (Bwaya = crocodile in the 

 Malay lingua franca, v. Crawfurd, etc.) and said that it had 

 been introduced from Macassar. Rumpf compares his plant, of 

 which the figure as regards the general habit is excellent, with 

 the Aloe americana of Clusius which he knew only by description, 

 noting at the same time that there are discrepancies between 

 bis living plant and the description which may be due to 

 climate or casual variation. 



