sas ras 
ape 
aR 
THE AGAVES OF LOWER CALIFORNIA. 43 
as to form a massed growth, but never flowered. Subsequent 
search about La Paz by himself and others has failed to 
result in the rediscovery of anything comparable with this 
cultivated specimen or recognizable as A. spiralis, which 
really appears to be scarcely distinguishable from A. decip- 
iens of Florida and the status of which on the western side 
of the continent must await further study. 
As on the Mexican mainland, mezcal is made from some 
of the species. Mr. Brandegee records that A. aurea is put 
to this use, while he was led to name another species of the 
same region A. sobria because it was said not to be so used. 
No doubt fiber is extracted locally for domestic purposes 
from a number of the species. In connection with his col- 
lection of the long-leaved plant which I have named promon- 
torii, Dr. Rose notes that it is probably used for fiber because 
he found that the young cores had been cut out frequently. 
It is possible that the references to A. aurea as a fiber plant 
really pertain to this, its Cape representative; in any event 
it appears from the published statements that efforts have 
been made to cultivate for fiber what was taken for A. aurea. 
In 1897 Dr. Rose made a collection of the true henequen, 
A. fourcroydes, in a yard at La Paz, but I lack information 
that it has been grown on a large scale in the peninsula. 
When, in 1902, Dr. Weber (Bull. Mus. Hist. Nat. 8; 218- 
224) published the brief account of the agaves of western 
Mexico and Lower California in which he named the prin- 
cipal species grown for the commercial production of mezcal 
about Tequila A. tequilana, he illustrated its flowering as- 
pect by a photograph made by M. Diguet in Lower Cali- 
fornia, where it was said to be cultivated frequently. A lit- 
tle above a year since, while studying the numerous and 
diverse mezcal species of western Mexico, I learned from Con- 
sul Lucien Sullivan of La Paz, through the kindly offices of 
our national Secretaries of State and Commerce and Labor, 
that a plantation of about 100,000 plants, occupying some 
75 acres of ground, exists at San Antonio, about fifty miles 
southeast of La Paz, from which between 18,000 and 20,000 
liters of mezcal are made annually. Specimens of the plant 
