ALOES— AGAVES— SCREW- PINE— CACTUSES. 



533 



strong cane, but almost every article of furniture which it contains — mats, screens, 

 chairs, tables, bedsteads, bedding — is of the same material. From the young shoots 

 they also fabricate their fine writing paper. In Mysore and Orizza the seeds of several 

 species are eaten with honey ; and in Sikkim the grain of the Praong, a small bam- 

 boo, is boiled, or made into cakes, or into beer. In Java, the prickly bamboo, whose 

 wood is of such flinty hardness that sparks are emitted on its being struck with an 

 axe, and whose formidable thorns project from every node, is used to form impenetrable 

 hedges. 



The Aloes form the strongest contrast to the airy lightness of the grasses, by the 

 stately repose and strength of their thick, fleshy, and inflexible leaves. They gener- 

 ally stand solitary in the parched plains, and impart a peculiarly austere or melancholy 

 character to the landscape. The real aloes are chiefly African, but the American 

 yuccas and agaves have a similar physiognomical character. The Agave Americana, 

 the usual ornament of our hot-houses, bears on a short and massive stem a tuft of 

 fleshy leaves, sometimes no less than ten feet long, fifteen inches wide, and eight inches 

 thick. After many years a flower-stalk twenty feet high shoots forth in a few weeks 

 from the heart of the plant, expanding like a rich candelabrum, and clustered with 

 several thousands of greenish yellow aromatic flowers. But a rapid decline succeeds 

 this brilliant efflorescence, for it is soon followed by the death of the exhausted plant. 



In Mexico, where the agave is indigenous, and whence it has found its way to 

 Spain and Italy, it is reckoned one of the most valuable productions of Nature. At 

 the time when the flower-stalk is beginning to sprout, the heart of the plant is cut out, 

 and the juice, which otherwise would have nourished the blossom, collects in the hol- 

 low. About three pounds exude daily, during a period of two or three months. 

 Thus a single agave, or maguey, gives about a hundred and fifty bottles. But the 

 use of the agave is not confined to the production of a vinous liquor, as the tough 

 fibres of its leaves furnish an excellent material for the strongest ropes, or the forma- 

 tion of coarse cloth. Long before the conquest of the country by Cortez, the abo- 

 rigines applied the agave to a great variety of purposes. From it they made their 

 paper (pieces of which of various thickness are still found covered with curious hiero- 

 glyphic writing), their threads, their needles (from its sharp points), and many arti- 

 cles of clothing and cordage. 



The Pandanus odoratissimus, or Sweet smelling Screw-pine, whose fruits, when 

 perfectly mature, resemble large richly-colored pine-apples, plays an important part in 

 the household economy of the coral-islanders of the South Sea. The inhabitants of 

 the Mulgrave Archipelago, where the cocoa-nut is rare, live almost exclusively on the 

 juicy pulp, and the pleasant kernels of the fruit. The dried leaves serve to thatch 

 their cottages, or are made use of as a material for mats and raiment. The wood is 

 hard and durable. They string together the beautiful red and yellow colored nuts for 

 ornaments, and wear the flowers as garlands. When the tree is in full blossom, the 

 air around is impregnated with delicious aromas. 



The grotesque forms of the Cactuses possess the stifi" rigidity of the aloes. Their 

 fleshy stems, covered with a gray-green coriaceous rind, generally exhibit bunches of 

 hair and thorns instead of leaves. The angular columns of the Cerei, or torch cac- 

 tuses, rise to the hight of sixty feet, — generally branchless, sometimes strangely rami- 

 fied, as candelabras, while others creep like ropes upon the ground, or hang, snake- 



