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SUCCULENT PLANTS. 
Under this title is comprehended a vast assemblage of plants, distributed into 
a considerable number of genera, exhibiting a great diversity of form, and inha- 
biting various districts of both the Old and the New World. They derive their 
name from the large, thick, fleshy, and juicy leaves, branches, or stems, which 
characterize the species ; for though succulence is common to some other vegetable 
groups, it is usually occasioned by cultivation or climatic circumstances, and is not, 
as in the case before us, a peculiar and distinguishing natural feature. Nearly all 
the members of this tribe are remarkable, moreover, for the persistence of their 
leaves or leaf-like ramifications, and for the greenness and softness of the exterior 
surface of their stems or substance. Still, the majority of them possess a woody 
axis, chiefly apparent in their centres, but, in some instances, as in the Epiphyllous 
kinds of Cacti, extending to the outside, which hardens and contracts into the 
shape and structure of an ordinary ligneous branch. 
As objects of modish interest, and eminently calculated to gratify curiosity, 
succulent plants rank immediately after Orchidacese. The difference in the kind 
of spell which holds the observer in these two tribes is very strongly marked. In 
Orchidaceous plants, beyond the striking nature of their habits, which are not 
much regarded, it is the extraordinary size, loveliness, variegation of hue, outline, 
conformation, and fragrance of their flowers, which prove so enchanting to their 
admirers ; and the endless multiplicity of all those traits, their singular versatility 
in the same species, the strange associations, contrasts, and varieties which they 
sometimes present, with the seeming boundlessness of the stores of novelty yet 
lying hidden in the recesses and forests of a large division of the globe, but inviting 
to be opened up and rifled by European research ; compose the throng of considera- 
tions that has obtained for them the favour to which they have lately been advanced. 
Succulents, on the contrary, are, with the exception of a few splendid Cacti, 
little valued on account of their blossoms, for the production of inflorescence is 
exceedingly rare with the kinds most prized, and in others it is altogether insignifi- 
cant. But the particular singularity of their contour, which is sometimes that of 
a long flattened leaf, occasionally like a huge club, and very frequently approach- 
ing to oval or globular, with more or less prominent ribs and parallel furrows, — the 
number, disposition, length, strength, and colour of their spines or hairs, and the 
description of the woolly appendages at the base of these, — combine, in conjunction 
with several other points, to render them the most odd, grotesque, and noticeable 
of the numberless peculiarities of the vegetable kingdoms. Indeed, Nature seems to 
have indulged in some of her wildest freaks in their creation, and to have collected 
together her most irregular vagaries in one grand and preeminent aggregation. 
While we thus speak, however, with the licence ofttimes granted to fancy, it 
must not for a moment be imagined that the subjects of remark are unnatural 
VOL. VII. NO. LXXX. A A 
