460 On the Cultivation and Management of the Cactus tribe. 



By Mr. Harris's permission I now lay before the Horticultural 

 Society a statement of my mode of managing Cacti, with a few 

 facts and suggestions respecting them, which may be of some use, 

 or interesting to those amateurs, who are now beginning to make 

 collections of these beautiful and highly interesting, though gro- 

 tesque plants. 



The Cacti are of all other plants the most easy to manage, and 

 the most varied in their outward forms, and yet preserving the most 

 striking family appearance. Some of them produce magnificent 

 white flowers, others blossoms of the most brilliant colours ; and all 

 of them are so singularly interesting, both in or out of flower, and 

 they occupy so little room, that I have no hesitation in recom- 

 mending their extensive cultivation. Many of them are very suit- 

 able for growing as window plants, such as the Mammillariae, and all 

 of them are admirably adapted for amateurs whose time will not 

 allow them to attend to plants more peculiar in their habits. 



The first thing necessary for the successful cultivation of this, or 

 indeed any extensive tribe of plants, is to have a clear knowledge 

 of their geographical range in a state of nature : as this should de- 

 termine the degree of heat suitable to their health in an artificial 

 climate ; and the next consideration is, to know their physical his- 

 tory in their natural localities, in order that we may be enabled to 

 apply the powers of cultivation with certainty. It is not indeed 

 necessary that we should strictly imitate their natural condition, 

 but merely that we should know it, in order that our practice may 

 be founded on nature and reason. 



The grand natural emporium for Cacti is Mexico, but vast num- 

 bers of them are found in all latitudes of South America, from the 

 north of Mexico to the southern plains of Chili. Some of the spe- 

 cies have been met with beyond both these limits, and even in the 

 old world ; but they are not sufficiently numerous to affect the 

 general truth of the above cursory view of their natural distribution. 

 A few species inhabit the sea coast on both shores of the new con- 



