settlements have procured them. When we were at Tomependa, on the banks of the river Amazons, we saw several families of Xibaros Indians, who had established themselves at Tatumbero in an almost inaccessible place between the cataracts of Yaraquisa and Patorumi; and several hens were seen in the huts of these savages, when they were visited for the first time, some years ago. New Spain has supplied Europe with the largest and most useful of domestic gallinaceous birds, the turkey (totolin or huexolotl) which was formerly found wild on the back of the Cordilleras, from the Isthmus of Panama to New England. Cortez relates that several thousands of these birds which he calls hens (gallinas) were fed in the poultry-yards of the castles of Montezuma. From Mexico the Spaniards carried them to Peru, to Terra Firma, (Castilla del Oro) and the West India Islands, where Oviedo described them in 1515. Hernandez even then very well observed that the wild turkies of Mexico were much larger than the domestic ones. The former are only now to be found in the northern provinces. They withdraw towards the north in proportion as the population increases, and consequently, the forests become more rare. An intelligent traveller to whom we owe a very interesting description of the countries to the west of the Alleghany mountains*, M. Michaux, informs us that the wild turkey of Kentucky sometimes weighs even 40 pounds, an enormous weight for a bird which flies so rapidly, especially when pursued. When the English, in 1584, landed in Virginia, turkies had for fifty years been introduced into Spain, Italy, and England †. This bird did not then pass from the United States into Europe, as has been falsely maintained by many naturalists. The Pintades (numida meleagris) designated so happily by the ancients under the name of aves guttatæ, are very rare in Mexico, while they have grown wild in the Island of Cuba. As to the musk-duck (anas moschata) called by the Germans, Turkish duck, which has become so common in our poultry-yards, Europe is indebted for it also to the New Continent. We found it wild on the banks of the river Madelena, where the male grows to a prodigious size. The ancient Mexicans had tame ducks, which they annually plucked, as the feathers were an important object of commerce. These ducks appear to have been Crossed with the species introduced into Europe. The goose is the only one of the birds of our poultry-yards which is no where to be found in the Spanish Colonies of the New Continent. * Voyage de Michaux, p. 190. † Beckmann, 1. c. T. iii. p. 238–270. The cultivation of the mulberry, and the rearing of silk worms, were introduced by the care of Cortez, a few years after the siege of Tenochtitlan. There is a mulberry tree on the ridge of the Cordilleras peculiar to the equinoctial regions, the morus acuminata, Bonpl. which we found wild in the kingdom of Quito, near the villages of Piso and Puembo. The leaf of this mulberry is not so hard as that of the red mulberry, (M. rubra) of the United States, and the silk worms eat it like that of the white mulberry of China. This last tree, which according to Olivier de Serres, was only planted in France, in the reign of Charles the eighth, about the year 1494, was already very common in Mexico, about the middle of the 16th century. A considerable quantity of silk was then produced in the Intendancy of la Puebla, in the environs of Panuco *, and in the Province of Oaxaca, where several villages of the Misteca, still bear the nammes of Tepexe de la Seda, (Silk) and San Francisco de la Seda. The policy of the Council of the Indies, constantly unfavourable to the manufactures of Mexico, on the one hand, and on the other, the most active commerce with China, and the interest which the Philippine Company have in selling the Asiatic silks to the Mexicans, seem to be the principal causes of the gradual annihilation of this *La Florida del Inca (Madrid, 1723) T. i. p. 258. branch of colonial industry. A few years ago, an individual at Queretaro, proposed to the government the making of large plantations of mulberry, in one of the finest vallies of Mexico, la Canada of the baths of San Pedro, inhabited by more than three thousand Indians. The rearing of silk worms requires less care than cochineal, and the character of the natives renders them extremely fit for every sort of labour, which requires great patience and minute care. The Canada, which is two leagues from Queretaro, towards the north east constantly enjoys a mild and temperate climate. The Lavrus persea is only now cultivated there, and the viceroys who dread to infringe on what is called in the colonies, the rights of the Mother Country, have been unwilling to admit the substitution of mulberries to the present species of cultivation. New Spain has several species of indigenous caterpillars, which spin silk in the manner of the Bombyx Mori of China, but which have never yet been sufficiently examined by entomologists. The silk of the Misteca derived from these animals, was an object of commerce, even in the time of Montezuma. Handkerchiefs are still manufactured in the intendancy of Oaxaca of this Mexican silk. We purchased some on the road to Acapulco, at to Acapulco, at Chilpanzingo. The stuff feels rough, like certain Indian silks, which are equally the produce of very different silk-worms, from that of the mulberry. In the provinces of Mechoacan, and inthe mountains of Santa Rosa, to the north of Guanaxuato bags of an oval form, resembling the nests of the Orialus, (Troupiales) and the Caciques, are seen suspended from different kinds of trees, and especially the branches of the Arbutus Madroño. These bags called capullos de madroño, are the work of a great number of caterpillars of the Bombyx de Fabricius kind, who live in society, and spin together. Each capullo is from 18 to 20 centimetres in length, by 21 in breadth*. They are of a brilliant whiteness, and formed in beds, which may be separated from one another. The interior beds are the most slender, and of an extraordinary transparency. The matter of which these large bags is formed resembles Chinese paper: the tissue is so dense that the threads which are pasted transversely over one another, are scarcely perceiveable. I found a great number of these capullos de madroño, on descending the coffre de Perote towards las Vigas at an absolute height of 3200 metrest. It is possible * From 7 to 7 inhces, by 33 inches. Trans. |