ALOE VULGARIS. 
9D 
" I should observe, that although aloes are often cut in nine, ten, 
or twelve months after being planted, they are not in perfection till 
the second or third year; and that they will be productive for ten 
or twelve years, or even longer, if good dung, or manure of any 
kind, is strewed over the field once in three or four years. 
" The Aloe juice will keep for several weeks without injury. It 
is therefore not boiled till a sufficient quantity is procured, to make 
it an object for the boihng house. 
"In the large way, thtee boilers, either of iron or of copper, are 
placed to one fire, though some have but two, and the small planters 
only one. The boilers are filled with the juice, and as it ripens, or 
becomes inspissated, by a constant but regular fire, it is ladled for- 
ward from boiler to boiler, and fresh juice is added to that farthest 
from the fire, till the juice in that nearest the fire, (by much the 
smallest of the three, and commonly called by the name of tateh, as 
in the manufactory of sugar) becomes of a proper consistence to be 
skipped or ladled out into gourds or other small vessels used for its 
final reception. The proper time to ladle it out, is when it is 
arrived at what is termed a resin height, or when it cuts freely, or 
drops in thin flakes, from time to time, into the tatch for that 
purpose. A little lime water is used by some Aloe boilers during 
the process, when the ebullition is too great. 
" As to the sun-dried aloes, which are more approved of for medi- 
cal purposes, very little is made in Barbadoes. The process is very 
simple. The raw juice is either put into bladders left quite open at 
the top, and suspended in the sun, or in broad shallow trays of 
wood, pewter, or tin, exposed also to the sun, every dry day, until 
all the fluid parts are exhaled, and a perfect resin formed, which is 
then packed up for use or exportation." 
Aloe Socotrin a, or true Socotrine Aloes,* so named from being 
formerly brought from the island of Socotra, or Zocotra, at the 
mouth of the Red Sea, near the straits of Babelmandel, comes 
wrapped in skins. This sort of aloes, is also imported from the 
Cape and Bombay, and we are told by Mr. Barrow, that the quan- 
* This sort of aloes is chieflj- the product of the Aloe Spicata, the species of aloe 
most abundant at the Cape ; but the various sorts of aloes are not the product of one 
species only, but of the several species and varieties that are produced in countries in 
which the aloes are prepared, although one may prevail. — Ed. 
