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ARBORETUM ANI) FliUTJCETUM.

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tries, it is perfectly hardy in the climate of London . It was first cultivated inEngland by Gerard, about 1592, who says : “ This plant groweth in all the tractof the Indies, from the Magellane Straits unto the Cape of Florida , and in mostof the islands of the Canibals, and others adjoining; from whence I had thatplant brought me that groweth in my garden, by a servant of a learned and skil-ful apothecary of Excester named Mr. Thomas Edwards.” Gerard supposedthat the cazava, or Indian bread, was made from the root of this plant; buthis commentator, Johnson, says that this was “ wherein he most shewedhis weaknesse, for that he doth confound it with the manibot, or true yuicca.”Gerard also supposed that it was “ a low herbe, consisting onely of leaves androots. It hath neither stalks,” he says, “ flowers, nor fruit, that I can under-stand of others, or by experience of the plant itself, which hath grown in mygarden four yeares together, and yet doth grow and prosper exceedingly.”On this passage Johnson observes, that Gerard’s plant, “ some few yeares afterhe had set forth his worke, flowered in his garden ; ” adding that he himselfonce saw a yucca in flower “ in the garden of Mr. Wilmot, at Bow, but neversince, though it hath been kept for sundry yeares in many other gardens, aswith Mr. Parkinson and Mr. Tuggy.” Respecting the plant in Gerard’s gar-den “ at Holborne, in the suburbs of London, ” Parkinson , in his Paradisus,p. 434., tells us that Gerard kept it till his death ; after which “ it perishedwith him who got it from his widow, intending to send it to his countryhouseadding that Gerard sent a sucker of it to Robin, gardener toHenry IV. in Paris , which was the first seen in France . Michaux found itgrowing on the sea shore in Carolina. The fibres of the leaves are used bythe Indians to make a kind of cloth, and also cords, which they use to fasten