of Toluca alone yields annually more than 600,000 fanegas *, on an extent of thirty square leagues, of which a great part is cultivated in agave. Between the parallels of 18° and 22° the frosts and cold winds render this cultivation by no means lucrative on plains whose height ex· ceeds three thousand metres †. The annual produce of maize in the intendancy of Guadalaxara is, as we have already observed, more than 80 millions of kilogrammes . Under the temperate zone, between the 33° and 58° of latitude, in New California for example, maize produces in general only, communibus annis, from 70 to 80 for one. By comparing the manuscript memoirs of Father Fermin Lassuen which I possess with the statistical tables published in the historical account of the voyage of M. de Galeano, I should be enabled to indicate village by village the quantities of maize sown and reaped. I find that in 1791 twelve missions of New California || reaped 7625 fanegas on a piece of ground sown with 96. In 1801 the harvest of 16 missions was 4661 fanegas, while the quantity sown only amounted to 66. Hence for the *A fanega weighs four arrobas or a hundred pounds, in some provinces 120 pounds (from 50 to 60 kilogrammes). Author. 600,000 fanegas therefore 66,210,600 lbs. Trans. † 9842 feet. Trans. = 176,562,400 lbs. avoirdupoise. Trans. former year the produce was 79, and for the latter 70 for one. This coast in general appears better adapted for the cultivation of the cerealia of Europe. However it is proved by the same tables, that in some parts of New California, for example, in the fields belonging to the villages of San Buena Ventura and Capistrano, the maize has frequently yielded from 180 to 200 for one. Although a great quantity of other grain is cultivated in Mexico, the maize must be considered as the principal food of the people, as also of the most part of the domestic animals. The price of this commodity modifies that of all the others, of which it is, as it were, the natural measure. When the harvest is poor, either from the want of rain or from premature frost, the famine is general, and produces the most fatal consequences. Fowls, turkies, and even the larger cattle, equally suffer from it. A traveller who passes through a country in which the maize has been frost bit finds neither egg nor poultry, nor arepa bread, nor meal for the atolli, which is a nutritive and agreeable soup. The dearth of provisions is especially felt in the environs of the Mexican mines; in those of Guanaxuato, for example, where fourteen thousand mules, which are necessary in the process of amalgamation, annually consume an enormous quantity of maize. We have already mentioned the influence which dearths have periodically had on the progress of population in New Spain. The frightful dearth of 1784 was the consequence of a strong frost, which was felt at an epoqua when it was least to be expected in the torrid zone, the 28th August, and at the inconsiderable height of 1800 metres above the level of the ocean. Of all the gramina cultivated by man none is so unequal in its produce. This produce varies in the same field according to the changes of humidity and the mean temperature of the year, from 40 to 200 or 300 for one. If the harvest is good, the colonist makes his fortune more rapidly with maize than with wheat; and we may say,that this cultivation participates in both the advantages and disadvantages of the vine. The price of maize varies from two livres ten sous to 25 livres the fanega. The mean price is five livres in the interior of the country; but it is increased so much by the carriage, that during my stay in the intendancy of Guanaxuato, the fanega cost at Salamanca 9, at Queretaro 12, and at San Luis Potosi 22 livres. In a country where there are no magazines, and where the natives merely live from hand to mouth, the people suffer terribly whenever the maize remains for any length of time at two piastres or ten livres the fanega. The natives then feed on unripe fruit, on cactus berries, and on roots. This insufficient food occa 5904 feet. Trans. It is not only the fecula of the juca amarga which serves for nourishment to the Indians, they use also the juice of the root, which in its natural state is an active poison. This juice is decomposed by fire. When kept for a long time in ebullition it loses its poisonous properties gradually as it is skimmed. It is used without danger as a sauce, and I have myself frequently used this brownish juice, which resembles a very nutritive bouillon. At Cayenne it is thickened to make cabiou, which is analogous to the souy brought from China, and which serves to season dishes. From time to time very serious accidents happen when the juice has not been long enough exposed to the heat. It is a fact very well known in the islands, that formerly a great number of the natives of Haity killed themselves voluntarily by the raw juice of the root of the juca amarga. Oviedo relates, as an eyewitness, that these unhappy wretches, who, like many African tribes, preferred death to involuntary labour, united together by fifties to swallow at once the poisonous juice of the jatropha. This extraordinary contempt of life characterises the savage in the most remote parts of the globe. Reflecting on the union of accidental circumstances which have determined nations to this or that species of cultivation, we are astonished to * Aublet Hist. des Plantes de la Guyane Françoise, tom. ii. see the Americans, in the midst of the richness of their country, seek in the poisonous root of a tithymaloidthesame amylaceous substance which other nations have found in the family of gramina, in bananas, asparagus (dioscorea alata), aroides (arum macrorrhizen. Dracontium polyphillum), solana, lizerons (convolvulus batatas, c. chrysorhizus), narcissi (tacca pinnatifida), polygonoi (p.fagopyrum), urticæ (artocarpus), legumens and arborescent ferns (cycas circinnalis). We ask why the savage who discovered the jatropha manihot did not reject a root of the poisonous qualities of which a sad experience. must have convinced him before he could discover its nutritive properties? But the cultivation of the juca dulce, of which the juice is not deleterious, preceded perhaps that of the juca amarga, from which the manioc is now taken. Perhaps also the same people who first ventured to feed on the root of the jatropha manihot had formerly cultivated plants analogous to the arum and the dracontium, of which the juice is acrid, without being poisonous. It was easy to remark, that the fecula extracted from the root of an aroid is of a taste so much the more agreeable, as it is carefully washed to deprive it of its milky juice. This very simple consideration would naturally lead to the idea of expressing the fecula, and preparing it in the same manner as the manioc. We can conceive that a people who knew how to dulcify the roots of an aroid could under |