l86 THE STORY OF THE PLANTS. 



and only springs to life again when the return of 

 March gives it warning that its day has once 

 more come round to it. 



Contrast with this brief and very spasmodic 

 life of some thirty days the comparatively long 

 though otherwise extremely similar biography of 

 the Mexican agave, commonly cultivated in hot- 

 houses in England, and largely grown in the open 

 air in the South of Europe under the (incorrect) 

 name of "American aloes." The agave is a large 

 and strikingly handsome lily of the amaryllis fam- 

 ily, about which I have already told you something 

 in a previous chapter. It begins life as a small 

 plant, like a London pride, springing from a com- 

 paratively large and richly-stored seed on its own 

 dry prairies. Its leaves, which spread in a rosette, 

 are not unlike those of the house-leek in shape; 

 they are very large, thick, and fleshy. But as they 

 grow in the hot and dry climate of Mexico, an 

 almost desert country, with a very small rainfall, 

 they have a particularly hard outer skin, so as to 

 prevent undue evaporation ; and they are pro- 

 tected against the attacks of herbivorous animals 

 by being spiny at the edges, and ending in a stout 

 and dagger-like point of the most formidable de- 

 scription. The centre of the plant is occupied by 

 a sort of sheath of leaves, concealing the growing 

 point. For several years the round bunch of outer 

 leaves grows bigger and bigger, till it attains a 

 diameter of ten or fifteen feet at the base, seem- 

 ing still like a huge rosette, with hardly any visi- 

 ble stem to speak of. Meanwhile these huge leaves 

 are busy all the time, eating and assimilating, and 

 storing up manufactured food-stuffs as hard as 

 they can in their thick and swollen bases. After 

 six or seven years in their native climate, the 



