216 THE FLORIST AND 
time the drinks which the Aborigines made from these two plants ? This 
seems to us probable enough : but history is silent on the subject. 
The Cacti did not begin to be known until the end of the seventeenth 
century. Towards this time the Spaniard, Hernandez ; the German, Her- 
mann, and especially the indefatigable Father Plumier, a French Jesuit 
missionary, described and figured several species. Tournefort afterwards 
created the genera Opuntia and Meloeactus, (Melocarduus of some authors ;) 
Father Plumier, the genus JPercsJcia, [Peireiscia;) Hermann, the genus 
EpipJiyllum, for the species with flat and winged stems. Linnd, later, (in 
1737,) united these three genera in one, under the name of Cactus, in which 
he comprised the few species known in his time. In the state of the science 
at this time, this was the wisest arrangement that could have been adopted. 
From this time until the end of the eighteenth century, we only know of 
Miller who was occupied with Cacti, of which he_ described several new 
species in his. Gardener's Dictionary, (1797.) 
It was reserved for the botanists of the nineteenth century to throw a 
great light upon this group of plants. Haworth (1812-1819, Synoi^s. plant, 
succulent, et Suppl.,) recapitulated the works of his predecessors in this 
family, and described some plants ; then a Crowd of interesting works on 
the same subject succeeded each other, from the Prince de Salm, Messrs. 
Otto, Link, Lehmann, the elder De Candolle, Martins, Zuccarini, &c. 
From 1839, De Candolle published in the Archives of the Museum of 
Natural History, an excellent memoir (in 4to. with twenty-one plates,) on 
the family of Cacti, and made known, at the same time, forty new species. 
But it is especially from 1837 and 1838, that the knowledge, so to speak, of 
Cacti, dates with us. 
At this time, (1837,) a French merchant named Deschamps, with the 
object of making a speculation, of which he had no cause to repent, sent in 
two shipments an immense quantity of Cactus, (three hundred boxes,) 
among which it was easy to distinguish a hundred entirely new species, and 
all the more interesting, as the most of them offered entirely new forms. 
We can mention, as particularly interesting, the EcMnocactus Mirhelii, 
coptonogonus, eelectrocanthus, erinaceus, &c. : the Mammillaria erecta, 
impexicoma, doNchocentra, &c. 
Such an importation made simultaneously in England, in Belgium, in 
France and in Germany, could not fail to attract the attention of horti- 
culturists and amateurs. From this time many amateurs commenced to' 
form collecfions. To increase these, a second introduction of Cactus, 
composed of species still more interesting, of types entirely new with 
