very willing to keep locked up from others; but whether from his former notes being intrinsically without merit, or from its being expected that so humble a being as a Translator, should steer at as great a distance as possible from the higher parts of authorship, the Translator candidly confesses that the reception of these notes, so far as he has had occasion to learn, was not such as to induce him to resume the office of Commentator.

From an idea that the weights used in the original, where the contrary was not expressly stated, were French, the Translator uniformly considered marcs to mean marcs of France; and it was not till near the end of the third volume, he discovered that the author meant marcs of Castille, which are to the French as 541 to 576: the conversions of marcs therefore, as far as page 394 of the third volume, are all in a slight degree erroneous, and to be reduced to accuracy require to be multiplied by

.93923.

The Translator in printing a list of Errata has no doubt that it might be easily increased by an attentive and intelligent reader. Those who know the difficulty of carrying a work through the press with a tolerable degree of correctness, will not perhaps be the most forward to accuse him of inaccuracy.

BOOK IV.

CHAPTER X.

Plants supplying raw materials for manufactures and commerce.-Rearing of cattle.-Fisheries.-Agricultural produce estimated from the value of the tithes.

ALTHOUGH the Mexican agriculture, like the agriculture of every country which supplies the wants of its own population, is principally directed towards alimentary plants; New Spain, however, is not less rich in those commodities exclusively called Colonial; that is to say, in the productions which supply raw materials for the commerce and manufacturing industry of Europe. That vast kingdom unites, in this point of view, the advantages of New England with those of the West India Islands. It is beginning in a particular manner to enter into competition with these islands, now that the civil war of St. Domingo, and the devastation of the French sugar colonies have rendered the cultivation of colonial commodities more profitable on the continent of Ame