( as the Yuccas among the Liliaceous plants, of which I 
have treated'in a former paper (vol. 3, p. 17 & 210), the Agaves 
present among the Amaryllidaceae a peculiar, gigantic, and some¬ 
times tree-like development; not otherwise found in these fami¬ 
lies. JLike the Yuccas, they are confined to the new world ; but, 
unlike them, which are represented by only about a dozen spe¬ 
cies, of a more or less uniform and unmistakable character, the 
Agave type branches out in perhaps a hundred (or 180 or 200, 
if w’e dare trust the catalogues of nurserymen) species, of greatly 
diversified appearance. 
The botanical investigation of the Agaves meets with the same 
difficulties as that of the genus above mentioned in connection 
/with them, the Yuccas, and as the Cacti, or, to use a term 
more of horticultural than botanical significance, but sanctioned 
by the authority of no less a name than that of the elder DeCan¬ 
dolle, the Plantes grasses. They have, for the most part, 
been Hong in cultivation, the individuals being propagated with 
their individual peculiarities by suckers, and very rarely by 
seeds. . Many of them have never bloomed in Europe, and many 
that did bloom have not been studied by competent botanists ; of 
a large number, their native country is unknown, and the travel¬ 
ling horticultural collectors have paid more, or only, attention to 
marketable plants than to botanically - instructive specimens. 
‘ Moreover, most of these plants are so clumsy and so difficult to 
properly preserve for the herbarium that travellers have shunned 
them ; so that even the standard herbaria contain mostly only 
very scanty and incomplete material. 
In the old United States only a single representative of the ge¬ 
nus was known, the Agave Vhginica , a rather small and incon¬ 
spicuous plant, if compared with the extensive development the 
/genus attains in Mexico and further south, in the number of 
species as well as in the bulk of individuals. But on our south¬ 
western border lands, the same region where the Cacti become a 
leading feature of the Flora, the "botanists of the U. S. and Mexi¬ 
can Soinn^ry Commission, twenty to twenty-five years ago, dis- 
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Missouri 
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