The cultivation and manufacture are of the most simple kind.  The usual mode of propagating the plants is by suckers; and all the care required is to keep them free from weeds.

From the high price which the best Barbados aloes fetches in the market, L7 per cwt., its culture might be profitably extended to many of the other islands.  The aloes plant is indigenous to the soil of Jamaica, and although handled by thousands of the peasantry and others, there is not perhaps one in five thousand who understands its properties or the value of the plant.  With the Jamaicans it is commonly used in fever cases, by slicing the leaves, permitting the juice to escape partially, and then applying them to the head with bandages;—­this is the only generally known property which it possesses there.

A series of trials made recently in Paris proved that cordage manufactured from the fibre of this plant grown in Algiers, was far preferable in comparative strength to that manufactured from hemp.  Cables, of equal size, showed that that made of the aloe raised a weight of one-fifth more than that of hemp.

The drug is imported into this country under the names of Socotrine, East Indian or Hepatic, Barbados, Cape and Caballine aloes.  It contains a substance called Aloetine, which some regard as its active principle.  The various species now defined are—­Aloe spicata, vulgaris, Socotrina, Indica, rubescens, Arabica, linguae-formis and Commelina.  The average imports in 1841 and 1842 were only about 170,780 cwts.; it is now much larger, and a great portion of the supply is drawn from the Cape colony.

The mode of preparing the drug, which I have myself seen in the West Indies, is exceedingly simple.  When the plant has arrived at proper maturity, the laborers go into the field with tubs and knives, and cut the largest and most succulent leaves close to the stalk; these are placed upright in the tubs, side by side, so that the sap may flow out of the wound.  Sometimes a longitudinal incision is made from top to bottom of the leaf, to facilitate the discharge.  The crude juice thus obtained is placed in shallow flat-bottomed receivers, and exposed to the sun until it has acquired sufficient consistency to be packed in gourds for exportation.  In preparing the coarser kind, or horse aloes, the leaves are cut into junks and thrown into the tubs, there to lie till the juice is pretty well drained out; they are then squeezed by the hand, and water, in the proportion of one quart to ten of juice, is added, after which it is boiled to a due consistence and emptied into large shallow coolers.

The following analysis by M. Edmond Robiquet of a specimen of Socotrine aloes, obtained from M. Chevallier, is given in the sixth volume of the “Pharmaceutical Journal,” p. 277.  The constituents in 100 parts were:—­