434 DRIED JUICES 



powder with nitric acid, when a reddish or yellowish brown colour is 

 produced. 



2. Zanzibar Aloes, which is sometimes regarded as a variety of 

 Socotrine, is commonly poured into skins which are then packed 

 in cases (' monkey-skin ' aloes). It is usually hard, but is sometimes 

 soft, and then the contents of the case become compacted into a 

 solid mass. It has a liver-brown colour, and a dull waxy, but nearly 

 smooth and even fracture. In this respect it differs from the 

 foregoing, which breaks with an uneven fracture, as it does also in 

 its odour, which is characteristic and strong but not disagreeable. 



Both the foregoing varieties of aloes are usually hepatic, a fact 

 that points to a slow concentration of the aloe juice, possibly by 

 spontaneous evaporation. Both occur also in the vitreous variety, 

 but East African aloes is seldom imported in this condition. 



SOUTH AFRICAN ALOES 



3. Cape Aloes. Large quantities of aloes of excellent quality are 

 exported from Mossel Bay to Cape Town in Cape Colony. It is 

 obtained from Aloe ferox, Miller, a species widely distributed in 

 South Africa and often occurring in considerable quantity. The aloe 

 juice is collected in goat-skins covering a hollow in the ground around 

 which the cut leaves are piled ; from these it is transferred to tins, 

 and finally boiled down over a naked fire in iron pans. This variety 

 of aloes, which is preferred in Austria and Germany, occurs in masses 

 of a dark reddish brown or nearly black colour, often with a greenish 

 tinge, and breaking with a clean, glassy fracture. Thin splinters are 

 perfectly transparent, of a reddish brown or amber-yellow colour, 

 and exhibit no trace of crystals when examined under the microscope. 

 It belongs therefore to the class of glassy, lucid, or vitreous aloes, and 

 may be easily distinguished from all other glassy aloes by its very 

 distinctive sour odour and by the pale yellow colour of its powder, 



Recently the aloe juice has been allowed to undergo slight fermen- 

 tation and then dried in shallow troughs exposed to the sun's heat. 

 This aloes is known as c Crown ' and also as ' Uganda ' aloes, the latter 

 being a very misleading fancy name ; it occurs in bricks or fragments 

 of a yellowish brown colour and bronze-gold fracture ; it has the odour 

 of Cape aloes, but is distinctly an hepatic aloes. It is now practically 

 obsolete. 



4. Natal Aloes. The botanical source of this variety of aloes, 

 which is seldom imported, has not yet been definitely ascertained 

 (possibly A. succotrina, Garsault). 



Natal aloes is almost always opaque, and has a characteristic dull 

 greenish black or dull brown colour. In odour it closely resembles 

 Cape aloes, and it may therefore be easily distinguished from all other 

 opaque aloes by this character alone. It yields when scraped a pale 



