684 LILIACE.E. 



the Cape Colony is not carried on by preference, but is resorted to when 

 more profitable work is scarce. The diug is sold by the farmers to the 

 merchants of the towns on the coast, some of whom have exerted them- 

 selves to obtain a better commodity, and have even imported living 

 aloe-plants from Barbados. 



Nothing is known of the manufacture of the so-called Socotrine or 

 Zanzibar Aloes, or even with certainty in what precise localities it is 

 carried on. 



General Description — The differences in the several kinds of 

 commercial aloes are due to various causes, such as the species of Aloe 

 employed and the method of extracting the juice. The drug varies ex- 

 ceedingly: some is perfectly transparent and amorphous, with a glassy 

 conchoidal fracture ; some is opaque and dark with a dull waxy fracture, 

 or opaque and pallid ; or it may be of a light orange-brown and highly 

 crystalline. It varies in consistence in every degree, from dry and 

 brittle to pasty, and even entirely fluid and s_yrup-like. 



These diverse conditions are partially explained by an examination 

 of the very fluid aloes that has been imported of recent years from 

 Bombay. If some of this aloes is allowed to repose, it gradually sepa- 

 rates into two portions, — the upper a transparent, black liquid, — the 

 lower, an orange-brown crystalline sediment. If the whole be allowed 

 to evaporate spontaneously, we get aloes of two sorts in the same mass ; 

 the one from the upper portion being dark, transparent and amorphous, 

 the other rather opaque and highly crystalline. Should the two layers 

 become mixed, an intermediate form of the drug results. 



The Hepatic Aloes of the old writers^ was doubtless this rather 

 opaque form of Socotrine Aloes ; but the term has come to be used some- 

 what vaguely for any sort of liver-coloured aloes, and appears to us 

 unworthy to be retained. Much of the opaque, so-called Hepatic Aloes 

 does not however owe its opacity to crystals, but to a feculent matter 

 the nature of which is doubtful. 



The odour of aloes is a character which is much depended on by 

 dealers for distinguishing the different varieties, but it can only be 

 appreciated by experience, and certainly cannot be described.^ 



Varieties — The principal varieties of aloes found in English com- 

 merce are the following : — 



1. Socotrine Aloes — also called Borrihay, East Indian, or Zanzibar 

 Aloes, and when opaque and liver-coloured. Hepatic Aloes. It is im- 

 ported in kegs and tin-lined boxes from Bomba}^ whither it has been 

 carried by the Arab traders from the African coast, the Red Sea ports, 

 or by way of Zanzibar, from Socotra. When of fine quality, it is of a 

 dark reddish-brown, of a peculiar, rather agreeable odour, comparable to 

 myrrh or safi'ron. In thin fragments, it is seen to be of an orange-brown ; 

 its powder is of a tawny reddish-bi'own. When moistened with spirit 

 of wine, and examined in a thin stratum under the microscope, good 



1 As Macer Floridus in the lOtli century, Natal is invariably associated with the trans- 



who writes : — parent Cape Aloes, simijly from the fact 



"Sunt Aloes species seining, qua. subrabet estque that the two drugs have a similar smell. 



Intussicutbepar cum frangitur, hac epati'e Again, the aloes ot tura9ao IS at once re- 



Dicitur et raagnas habct in niedicamine vires, cognized by its odour, which an experienced 



Utilior piceo qua; fracta colore videtur." druggist pronounces to be quite different 



*Thus the pale, liver-coloured aloes of from that of the aloes produced in Barbados. 



