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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



alcohol, and, like pulque, possesses certain medicinal properties. 



Like pulque, mezcal is sold cheaply. It is to be found everywhere 

 and contributes largely to the demoralization of the native peon, who 

 often drinks it to excess and, like many another human type, commits 

 most of his crimes when influenced by alcohol. Those who watched 

 for the threatened revolution of the sixteenth of September last, prob- 

 ably noticed that the very wise head of the republic forestalled any large 

 demonstration by seeing that drinking places were closed throughout 

 the country. 



To supply the distilleries at Tequila, a considerable acreage is 

 planted to mezcal agaves. Those most used there belong to a well- 

 marked, narrow-leaved species which a few years ago received the ap- 

 propriate and distinctive name A. Tequilana. As with the pulque spe- 



FlG. Jl. QUIOTE. IN DURANGO. 



cies, a number of horticultural forms of this are recognized. The leaves 

 are generally glaucous, and a field of these white plants produces a 

 striking effect. If allowed to bloom, this, too, develops a striking and 

 large candelabrum of flowers; but, like the pulque maguey, it is har- 

 vested when mature but before its saccharine food reserve has been 

 exhausted in the production of flowers and fruit. The leaves are cut 

 back to their thick bases and the trunks, so trimmed, are packed — 

 usually on mules — to the distillery, where, after a preliminary roasting, 

 still in rather primitive smoky pits, they are converted into a mash 

 which is fermented in large wooden tanks and then distilled in modern 

 apparatus, much as is clone in the production of liquors elsewhere. At 

 these modern stills, the bagasse from which the mash has been squeezed 

 by rollers is even packed away by half-naked laborers to be used to feed 

 the furnaces. 



