136 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Fen., 1898. 
for the night to prepare the supper for the oxen. Arriving at the destination, 
these men set to work collecting piles of dried cactus leaves and roots, with 
which fires are made—and here I may mention that in the absence of wood the 
dry plant makes excellent fuel; then the green leaves (or flattened branches, 
to speak strictly) are chopped off the plant, stuck on forks, and toasted in the 
flames until all the prickles are burnt off, when the leaves are cut into con- 
venient chunks for the animals to masticate. This food should be allowed to 
cool well before it is eaten, or it will produce indigestion and diarrhwa. Cattle 
work and thrive on this food alone, and can go without water for several days 
without any apparent shrinkage in flesh or loss of muscular force. It is very 
curious to see the teams of oxen brace to their work and go ahead as soon as 
they sée or smell the fire where their supper is being prepared ; and when they 
have finished their cooked rations and are turned loose or herded, as the case 
inay be, for the night, they will search for the ripe fruit of the plant, which is _ 
sweet, nutritive, and juicy, and abounds in great quantities nearly all the year 
round. . . . . Sheep will get fat in a country where there is little or 
nothing else but prickly pear; the plant needs no cooking for them, the 
narrowness of their mouths enabling them to gnaw at the leaves between the 
prickles; the leaf once opened in this manner, it is an easy matter for the 
sheep to get at the remainder of the pulp. Sheep require little or no moisture 
in a prickly pear country.” 
In the same bed with the cacti are a number of plants, allied to the lilies, 
known as Agaves. These are used in their native countries for various 
purposes, but chiefly for the fibre which is found in abundance in the succulent 
leaves. The Sisal hemp is of this kin, but it has been fully discussed by Mr. 
McLean in a recent number of the Journal. The plant known popularly ag 
the American Aloe (Agave americana) produces a fibre known as Mexican 
grass. It arrives in London from Tehuantepec. The Mexicans prepared from 
it an intoxicating beverage called pulque, to the consumption of which Cortez 
found the higher classes of the people much addicted when he entered their 
capital in 1519. A piece of the leaf of this plant, if scraped and applied as a 
poultice to a bruise, rapidly cures it. Occasionally a man happens to get a 
black eye (almost invariably in chopping wood), and there is no remedy which 
will reduce that eye to its normal condition quicker than a piece of the leaf 
of this plant. It must not touch the eye itself, or it will, cause considerable 
pain. 
This is often called the “century plant,’ because there is a popular idea 
that it blooms only once in 100 years. It would be equally true to say that it 
blooms once in 10,000 years only, because when it blooms it dies. It may 
bloom at any time from three or four years of age upwards, but it is usually 
seven years old before it flowers, and it may not flower for many years, 
In the same bed is an interesting plant which is now “poling,” as it is 
called. Itis the Mauritius Hemp (Furerea gigantea). It throws up a long 
spike, and on this are borne, in great profusion, little bulbils, each capable, 
when it reaches the earth, of sending down roots, and becoming an independent 
plant. It will be interesting for constant visitors to watch this plant from 
time to time, and note its development. The value of the exports of the fibre 
of this plant from Mauritius is about £50,000 per annum. 
A little further on to the left hand is a large bed of the Coffee Skrub 
(J. 9). This bears abundant crops of good heavy berries, which are always 
used for seed. The plants were not treated all along as coffee is treated on 
plantations, and, in consequence of having been pruned like an ordinary shrub, 
they have a crowded appearance, but the space is limited, and much show could 
not have been made in it. 
In a report dated 1877, twenty years ago, Mr. Hill, who in those days did 
much good work in importing useful plants and making our resources known 
abroad, speaks of this plot as having been recently planted. He refers to the fact 
that the coffee leaf disease had not yet put in an appearance. He evidently 
expected it, and quite naturally, for it has spread into Java, Sumatra, 
