PRICKLY PEARS EOW WILD IN INDIA. 
317 
from a seedling under his own eyes in Sherrard'’s garden. Alton in 17B9 
{Hortus Keweiisisy Uj p. 151) considered that he had this plant in the 
Royal collection at Kew : and this is hy no means impossible. Knowl- 
ton, Sherrard^s gardener, was only recently dead at that date and had 
been Aiton^s friend. 
The first comydications in the use of the specific name elatior eaine 
from Willdenow, who in his Species Vlantarum^ ii, (1799), p. 944, 
identified with Miller's plant, cultivated in Europe, specimens observed 
wild. He refers to Enphrasius'' travels, to Ilouttuyn and to one of 
Jacquin's works — rare works which I have not seen ; and he inserted 
into the brief diagnosis the ejathet subulate for the spines. He calls 
it Cactus Tuna, var. h. 
Alton still had the plant in ISll when the second edition of hi^ 
Bortus Kev^ensls appeared (iii, p. 179), and Haworth who, in onlv the 
next year, was the author of the combination — Oputitia elatior [Synopsis 
Flantarum Succulentarum, p. 187), and who was a friend of Aiton's, 
must have known the plant at Kew : indeed he cites Aiton’s Hortus 
Kewensis. 
in i\\Q Botanic Magazine (1813), plate 1557, when figuring 
Haworth's Opuntia nigricans makes it and Opuntia elatior both varie- 
ties of Opuntia Tuna. Tiie first is defined, after Haworth, as erecta, 
articulis late ovato-oblongis, spinis subulatis longissimis nigrescentibus/' 
the second, as erecta, articulis oblongis lanceolatisque, spinis diversifor- 
mibus fulvo-nigris, majoribus divaricatis 3 — 1 0-lineavibus." 
Pfeiffer in hi^ Enumeratio diagnostica Cactearum, (1837), p. 165 
put Opuntia elatior just after Opuntia nigricans, and savs of it 
‘‘ Opuntiae nigricanti valde (forsan nimis) affmis." He quotes Dillen 
Miller, Haworth and Wildenow to show wdiat he meant, and gives a 
description which he must have drawn up himself, for it adds to wEat 
had been written before Stigma 5-fidum. Fructus ruber, ovatus 
IJ poll, longus, 1 poll, diam." 
In 1846 Forester in his Ilandbiich der Cacteenkunde, p. 496, enu- 
merated Opuntia elatior and said how nearly related it is to Opuntia 
nigricans. Most of what he said, was taken from Pfeiffer, but he 
apparently knew the plant : he said it was the Opuntia nigricans of 
the Paris garden. 
Labouret in the Monographic de la Faviille d( Cactacees, 1853 
p. 456, does not add much to what Pfeiffer had said, except to sav how 
to cultivate it. Doubtless he had seen it alive in Paris, 
