— 24 — 
of the Gila River; fl. June and July.— The botanical history 
of this species is similar to that of most of the larger Agaves, 
the material for whose definition must be gathered piecemeal and 
from many different sources. Get. 19, 1846, a fruiting specimen 
was collected near the “Copper Mines” by Lieut. Emory, in the 
California expedition (see p. 310), 1 . c. p. 59, flow preserved in 
the Torrey herbarium and mentioned in the Mex. Bound. Botany 
as a short and broad-leaved form of A. Americana. In 1865 
Dr. E. Coues sent flowerbuds from Fort Whipple, which seem to 
belong to this species. In January, 1868, Dr. C. C. Parry, then 
on a railroad surveying expedition, again found it and collected 
seeds, which I distributed in Europe as A. Parryi; the young 
plants, raised from them, are now advertised in nursery cata¬ 
logues, but no description has yet been published. Then Mr. F 
BischofT, of Lieut. Wheeler’s expedition of 1871, brought capsules 
and seeds home. The first who, collecting foliage, flowers, and 
fruit, enabled me to connect all these scattered fragments, was 
Dr. J. T. Rothrock, Surgeon and Naturalist of Lieut. Wheeler’s 
^ Southwestern Expedition of 1874. He met with the plant in 
^'"’’“Rocky Canon” and as far north as Camp Apache in Northeast¬ 
ern Arizona. Why Koch and Jacobi should have referred the 
short notes of Torrey to a plant which they found in cultivation 
in Europe, is unknown to me ; Jacobi’s description does in nowise 
agree with our plant, as the margin of the leaves is nearly straight 
and not “ deeply crenate,” etc. 
Leaves erectish or the outer ones patulous, 10-12 inches long, 
3-3 £ inches wide, somewhat concave as all Agave leaves are, ra¬ 
ther abruptly acuminate and terminating in a very robust spine, 
1 inch long, flattened above, with two sharp lateral angles and a 
slight ridge in the middle ; from this spine a horny, brown mar¬ 
gin runs down the leaf-edges for 1 inch or more and to the upper¬ 
most teeth. Teeth 6-12 lines apart, comparatively small, only 
about 1 ? lines long, straight, or slightly curved up on upper, and 
smaller and curved back on lower part of leaf. Scape 8-12 feet 
high, 1-2 inches thick, bearing numerous large (2 inches wide at 
baseband twice as long, smaller upwards), triangular, closely 
adpressed bracts, herbaceous, with scarious brown margins and 
sharp points. Panicle itself, in well-developed plants, about 3 feet 
long, and ] foot in diameter, the stouter branches considerably 
