C80 LILIACE^. 



Hawortli are stated to produce a portion of the Cape Aloes of coni- 

 nierce.^ 



Various species of Agave, especially A. americana L., are largely 

 grown, since the first half of the 16th century, in the south of Europe, 

 and popularly called Aloe. All of them are plants of Mexico, while the 

 true aloes are natives of the old world. Botanicall}'- the genus Agave 

 differs from Aloe, in that the former has the ovary inferior, while in 

 the latter it is superior. From a chemical point of view there is also 

 no analogy at all between Aloe and Agave. 



History — Aloes was known to the Greeks as a production of the 

 island of Socotra as early as the 4th century B.C., if we might credit a 

 remarkable legend thus given in the writings of the Arabian geographer 

 Edrisi.^ When Alexander had conquered the king of the Persians and 

 his fleets had vanquished the islands of India, and he had killed Pour, 

 king of the Indies, his master Aristotle recommended him to seek the 

 island that produces Aloes. So when he had finished his conquests in 

 India, he returned by way of the Indian Sea into that of Oman, 

 conquered the isles therein, and arrived at last at Socotra, of which he 

 admired the fertility and the climate. And from the advice which 

 Aristotle gave him he determined to remove the original inhabitants 

 and to put Greeks in their place, enjoining the latter to preserve care- 

 fully the plant yielding aloes, on account of its utility, and because that 

 without it certain sovereign remedies could not be compounded. He 

 thought also that the trade in and use of this noble drug would be a 

 great advantage for all people. So he took away the original people 

 of the island of Socotra, and established in their stead a colony of 

 lonians, who remained under his protection and that of his successors, 

 and acquired great riches, until the period when the religion of the 

 Messiah appeared, which religion they embraced. They then became 

 Christians, and so their descendants have remained up to the present 

 time {circa a.d. 1154). 



This curious account, which Yule^ says is doubtless a fable, but 

 invented to account for facts, is alluded to by the Mahoraedan 

 travellers of the 9th century'' and in the 10th by Masudi,* who saj^s 

 that in his time aloes was produced only in the island of Socotra, where 

 its manufacture had been improved by Greeks sent thither by Alexander 

 the Great. 



Aloes is not mentioned by Theophrastus, but appears to have been 

 well known to Celsus, Dioscorides, Pliny and the author of the Periplus 

 of the Erythrean Sea, as well as to the later Greek ^ and the Arabian 

 physicians. From the notices of it in the Anglo-Saxon leech-books 

 and a reference to it as one of the drugs recommended to Alfred the 

 Great by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, we may infer that its use was not 

 unknown in Britain as early as the 10th century.'' 



^ In the above revision of the medicinal ^ Marco Polo, ii. 343. 



species of yl/oc we have made free use of * Anciennes liehitions des hides et de la 



the observations on the same subject Chhie de deux Voyarjeurs Mahometans, (jtd 



mentioned in th(iDiction>iai7-edeIJotainf/ue. y all^rent dans le neuvi^me si^cle, traduites 



We have also had the advantage of con- de I'Arabe, Paris, 1718. 113. 



suiting VV. Wilson Saunders, Esq., F.KS., ^ Tome iii. 30. — See Appendix, 



whose long familiarity with these plants ^ Alexander Trallianus, in Puschmann's 



in cultivation impart great weight to liis edition (quoted in the Appendix), i. 578, 



opinion. speaks of 'AXo'ijs inraTiTtooi — Aloii hepatica. 



^ G6ographie d'Edrisi, i. (1836) 47. ' See p. 439. note 1. 



