ALOE DICHOTOMA, in botany, called by the Dutch Kooker-boom or Quiver-tree, is a native of the southern parts of Africa, and seems to be a species of the AGAVE or American aloe (see AGAVE, Encycl.) It is thus described by LE VAILLANT in his New Travels into the Interior Parts of Africa: "The aloe dichotoma rises to the height of 25 or 30 feet; its trunk is smooth, and the bark white. When young, and the trunk not more than four or five feet long, it terminates with a single tuft of leaves, which, like those of the ananas, spread and form a crown, from the midst of which all its flowers issue. As it grows older, it pushes out lateral branches, perfectly regular and symmetrical, each of which has at its extremity a crown similar to that of the young plant. The kooker-boom thrives much better on mountains than in the plain. Instead of long roots penetrating deep into the earth, like those of other trees, it has but a very slight one by which it is fixed to the soil. Accordingly, three inches of mould are sufficient."
sufficient to enable it to grow upon the very rocks, and attain its utmost beauty; but its root is so feeble a support, that I could throw down the largest with a single kick of my foot. The hordes on the west make their quivers of the trunk of this tree when young, whence is derived the name given it by the planters."
It becomes not us, sitting in our chamber, to controvert a fact in natural history, of the reality of which we never had an opportunity of judging; nor would it be proper, on account of our own scepticism, to suppress the narrative of a traveller, who corrects the narratives of former travellers in terms which nothing should have dictated but the consciousness of his own invariable veracity. Yet we hope to be pardoned for expressing our surprise that, in any part of the world, trees should be found in great numbers 25 or 30 feet high, and shooting out many branches, which have yet so loose a hold of the ground, that the largest of them may be thrown down by the single kick of a man's foot. The reader's surprise will probably equal our's, when he is informed that the author saw one of these trees of which the trunk was ten feet four inches in circumference, whilst its branches overshadowed a space of more than 100 feet in diameter! This tree he assures that he could have kicked over. The country, according to his account, is not exempted from storms. He is himself a French philosopher. What a pity then is it that he did not explain to those, who have not had the benefit of being enlightened in that school, upon what principle of mechanics or statics the tree could resist the violence of the elements till it arrived at so enormous a size?