iiUCAIiYPTUS TEEES. 15l 



Redeemer's time to this age, because four centuries 

 effected on these Giant Lilies but little change. 

 Welwitchia here, like in rainless Damaraland, might 

 grow in our desert sands as one of the most wonder- 

 ful of plants, its only pair of leaves being cotyledo- 

 nous and lasting well - nigh through a century. Or 

 associate in your ideas with these one of the medici- 

 nal Tree Aloes of Namaqua, or one of the Poison Eu- 

 phorbias, never requiring pluvial showers (Euphorbia 

 grandidens), some as high as a good-sized two-storied 

 dwelling-house ; transfer to them also Cereus senilis, 

 thirty feet high, which, with all its attempts to look 

 venerable, only suceeds to be grotesque ; add to these 

 extraordinary forms such Lily-trees as the Fourcroya 

 longseva, with a stem of forty feet and an inflorescence 

 of thirty feet, whereas Agave Americana, Agave 

 Mexicana and allied species, while they quietly pass 

 through the comparatively short space of time allotted 

 to their existence, weave in the beautiful internal 

 economy of their huge leaves the threads which are 

 to yield the tenacious Pita-cords, so much in quest for 

 the rope-bridges of Central America. 



Some of the Echinocacti extend as far south as 

 Buenos Ayres and Mendoza, and would introduce 

 into many arid tracts of Victoria, together with the 

 almost numberless succulents of South Africa, a great 

 ornamental attraction, which horticultural enterprise 

 might turn to lucrative account ; just like our native 

 showy plants will become objects of far higher com- 

 mercial importance than hitherto has been attach- 

 ed to them. The columns of Cereus Peruvianus rise 

 sometimes to half a hundred feet ; some Cactese are 

 in reality the vegetable fountains of the desert. Such 



