January 4, 1893.] 



Garden and Forest. 



Miss Marianne North, are most instructive. These are pre- 

 served in the North Gallery, a building removed from all 

 others and also the gift of Miss North. This collection em- 

 braces about 850 subjects, and represents nearly a thousand 

 identified species of plants belonging to nearly a hundred and 

 fifty natural orders. It gives a remarkably good idea of the 

 general character of the vegetation of different parts of the 

 globe. The pictures were nearly all painted in the countries 

 inhabited by the plants, and during journeys covering a pe- 

 riod of over twelve years. 



Three separate museums are open to the public. In these 

 are exhibited well-preserved specimens of plants, woods and 

 plant-products, the collections displayed having chiefly an 

 economic interest. They evidently furnish a very interest- 



New or Little-known Plants. 



Agave angustissima. 



IT will be of considerable interest to the readers of 

 Garden and Forest to know that Dr. Edward Palmer 

 has collected what seems to be the little-known Agave 

 angustissima* (see iigure below). The plant is entirely- 

 unknown to the growers of Agaves, and is only represented 

 in herbaria by the type specimens in the Engelmann Herba- 

 rium at the Shaw School of Botany, St. Louis. 



The following note from Dr. Engelmann, published in 

 the Transactions 0/ the Academy of Sciences, St. Louis (vol. 



1^^ 



Fig. I. — Agave angustissima. 



ing and important series of object-lessons to great numbers 

 of visitors and seekers after information. The great library 

 and herbarium, which occupies still another separate building, 

 though necessarily not open to the multitude in the same free 

 way as are most of the other departments at Kew, is available 

 to all real students of botany. The Herbarium contains vast 

 numbers of types, and no systemafist or monographer can 

 afford to work without reference to it. 



Those interested in public museums, and botanical displays 

 in them, will find an easily accessible and a very interesting 

 and instructive one in the Natural History Museum, at South 

 Kensington, which has been arranged under the direction of 

 Dr. Carruthers. 



Arnold Arboretum. J- G, Jack, 



iii., p. 306), contained all the information that we have 

 previously had respecting this plant : 



" Dr. Gregg collected, near Ocotillo, direction of Tepic, in 

 western Mexico, leaves ofaplantwhichhesaysbearsascape 



* Agave (Littcea) angustissima Engelm. Acaulescent, leaves fifteen to thirty in a 

 dense rosette, straight, linear, twelve to twenty inches long, four to five lines Sroad 

 above the inflated base, flat on both sides, the edge splitting ofT in fine threads, 

 the end spine slightly pungent ; peduncle twelve feet long, including the dense 

 spikes; flowers in pairs, corolla yellow ; tube slender, cylindrical, eight to nine 

 inches long; lobes linear, six lines long; stamens purple; filaments more than 

 twice as long as lobes ; anthers becoming curved and forming almost a complete 

 circle ; fruiting peduncle very short or none in the axil of a long setaceous bract 

 (one to two inches long) ; pedicels, one to two lines long; capsule glabrous, nine to 

 ten lines long. Growing among rocks, with little soil, along the margin of the bay 

 at Alanzanillo, December i to 31, iS9o(No. 1070). 



