or other of the fennel plants. 
610 CACHRYS. 
The best cacao nuts of commerce are plump, 
shining, and quite free from mustiness or any 
symptoms of decay. The cacao of the Caraccas 
is the most abundant in the European markets, 
and brings, on the average, about one-third 
higher price than the cacao of Guayaquil; but 
the best, in price and reputation, is that from 
Socomusco. Cacao plantations were, at one time, 
extensive in Jamaica, but were destroyed by the 
effect of excessive taxation in Britain upon their 
imported produce ; and even the cacao plantations 
of the Caraccas have, of late, been considerably 
diminished by the encroachments of cotton, cof- 
fee, or sugar-cane cultivation. A large propor- 
tion of the cacao husks and shells met with in 
Great Britain is the refuse of the chocolate-ma- 
nufactories of Gibraltar and other places; and a 
considerable proportion of the chocolate of our 
shops is a vile compound of flour and soap. 
Plants of Theobroma cacao can be raised in 
Great Britain from cuttings in rich mould; but 
all plants of it for our hothouses were formerly 
imported from their native country in a seedling 
condition in pots. They require great nicety of 
management, frequent waterings, occasional clean- 
sings, and yet constant comparative dryness; and 
they cannot, without great difficulty, be brought 
to fruit.—Two other species of cacao-tree, Z'heo- 
broma bicolor and Theobroma guianensis, have been 
introduced to our hothouses since the commence- 
ment of the present century,—the former from 
New Granada, where it is cultivated, and the 
latter from Guiana. 
CACHRYS. A genus of hardy, herbaceous, 
perennial-rooted plants, of the umbelliferous fa- 
mily. Several species which formerly belonged 
to it are now dispersed under four other genera; 
but ten species still belonging to it have been in- 
troduced to Britain ; and about halfa dozen others 
are known to botanists. The introduced species 
are natives of Siberia, Tauria, Caucasus, the 
south of Europe, and the Levant; most have a 
height of about 12 or 18 inches, and produce yel- 
low or white flowers in July and August; and 
several possess a considerable resemblance to one 
The roots of most 
strike deep into loose soil, and are often as large 
as parsnips; and those of one species are eaten, 
in seasons of scarcity, by the inhabitants of Ser- 
via, Transylvania, and the adjacent countries. 
CACTUS. A genus of succulent, evergreen, 
erotesque-looking plants, forming the type of the 
natural order Cacteze or Opuntiaceze. This order, 
at a comparatively recent period, comprised few 
known plants, and was identical with a single 
genus; and, though now prodigiously enlarged, 
and comprising multitudes of known plants, and 
at least nine distinct genera, it is still very gene- 
rally called, not Cacteze, but Cactus. Its genera 
are cactus, opuntia, mammillaria, cereus, epi- 
phyllum, pereskia, melocactus, echinocactus, and 
rhipsalis ; and all of these, except the last, may 
be regarded as having for their type the genus 
CACTUS. 
opuntia. Only four or five species—and these not 
at all of striking character—have been permitted 
to remain with the genus cactus; so that all 
the most remarkable cacti of the nurseries must 
now be sought for under some of the other ge- 
nera, particularly opuntia, cereus, epiphyllum, 
mammillaria, melocactus, and echinocactus. The 
number of species at preserit cultivated in the 
greenhouses and hothouses of Britain is about 
one hundred and sixty. 
The cacti seem most closely allied, in habit and 
general character, to the orders Ficoidez and 
Crassulaceze ; and yet—in spite of an utter dis- 
similarity in structure and mode of subsistence— 
they are generally regarded as most nearly akin 
to Grossulaceze or the gooseberry-tribe. Their 
flowers, in many instances, are large, beautiful, 
and most imposing; the sepals have a segmented 
and overlapping border, and shade off from green- 
ness and leafiness to brilliant tinting and delicate 
texture; the petals emerge by insensible grada- 
tions from the sepals, and are very numerous, 
and often not a little gorgeous,—varying from 
pure white to rich scarlet and purple, and pass- 
ing through all the intermediate shades of co- 
lour; and the stamens are multitudinous and 
ageregately beautiful, and consist of slender and 
delicate filaments, surmounted by small roundish 
anthers. The fruit is a succulent, fleshy, watery 
berry, somewhat similar to the gooseberry, hav- 
ing at the end a broad scar, and containing nu- 
merous succulent seeds and a poorly flavoured or 
quite insipid juice, yet greedily eaten, in the 
native countries of the cacti, for the sake of its 
refreshing coolness and moisture. The structure 
of the fruit and the general spininess of the 
plants are the features which assimilate the cacti | 
to the grossulaceee. 
But by far the most remarkable characters of 
the cacti are their pervading succulence, their 
general leaflessness, their poverty in stomata or 
perspiring pores, their profuse prickliness and 
hairiness of surface, their grotesqueness and 
metamorphosis of structure, and their powerful 
fondness for aridity of situation. The stem of 
the opuntias is much compressed, that of the 
epiphyllums is somewhat leafy, that of the other 
genera is angular or deeply channelled, that of 
very many of the species is regularly jointed, and 
that of the whole order is exceedingly succulent, 
and contains but a small amount of woody mat- 
ter proportionally to its whole mass. But as the 
plants advance in age, a metamorphosis gradually 
occurs in their stems, obliterating their angles, 
furrows, and compressions, and converting them 
into almost perfectly cylindrical trunks ; and this 
metamorphosis has occasioned much confusion 
in the description of not a few of the species, and 
still prevents portions of the order from assum- 
ing a fixed systematic arrangement. Some, as 
the whole of the melocacti and echinocacti, have 
a spherical shape, and seldom grow higher than a 
few inches; many of even other shapes, as most 
