12\: NAT. ORDER. EUPHORBlACE^. 
This extensive order, (according to Dr. Lindley,) which does not 
probably contain less than 1500 species, either described or unde- 
scribed, exists in the greatest profusion and abundance in equinoctial 
America, where about three-eighths of the whole number have been 
found, sometimes in the form of large trees, frequently of bushes, still 
more usually of diminutive weeds, and occasionally of deformed, 
leafless succulent plants, resembling the Cacti in their port, but dif- 
fering from them in every other particular. In the Western world 
they gradually diminish as they recede from the Equator, so that not 
above fifty species are known in North America, of which a very 
small number reach as far as. Canada. In the old world the known 
tropical proportion is much smaller, arising probably from the species 
of India and equinoctial Africa not having been described with the 
same care as those of America — not above an eighth having been 
found in tropical Africa, including the Islands, and a sixth being 
perhaps about the proportion in India. A good many species inhabit 
the Cape, where they generally assume a succulent habit; and 
there are almost one hundred and twenty species in Europe — inclu- 
ding the basin of the Mediterranean — of these, sixteen only are 
found in Great Britain, and seven in Sweden. 
This genus, which is so extensive, was named in honor of Eu- 
phorbus, Physician to Juba, King of Mauritania. The different kinds 
of which are so remarkable for the copious acrid, milky juice, in 
some constituting caoutchouc. No less than two hundred and nine 
species are known to possess this property, and numerous undes- 
cribed ones are known to exist in our Herbarium. Many of them 
recommend themselves to cultivation by the strangeness of their 
forms, especially among the more succulent kinds — a few by the 
rich colors, not of the flowers indeed, but of the bracteas and floral 
leaves. The one in figure, though it cannot vie with the Enphorhia 
splendens or Euphorbia punicea, both of which bear such rich scarlet 
bracteas, is yet well deserving a place in every green-house, from the 
deep blood-color of its bracteas and floral leaves, wh'ch present a 
