THE CENTURY PLANT 221 



Henequen, however, is par-excellence the fiber agave. An inter- 

 esting minor chapter in our national evolution is contained in the 

 numerous appeals made to Congress about seventy years ago by our 

 former consul at Campeche, Henry Perrine, who desired a land grant 

 in subtropical Florida for the cultivation of this and other tropical 

 plants. The grant cost him his life, for he was killed by the Indians, 

 and the zone of henequen in this country scarcely goes beyond the 

 radius of his own tentative introduction of plants; but the Yucatan 

 industry, which in Dr. Perrine's day was small, though he saw a great 

 future for it if only the fiber could be less laboriously cleaned than it 

 then was by hand, has grown greatly, and the Bahamas, India, Hawaii 

 and tropical Africa are entering the field with more or less realization 

 of their expectations of gain from this crop. 



Like the pulque maguey and the Tequila mezcal, henequen is repre- 

 sented in the larger plantations by several horticultural forms if not 

 by more than one distinct species. The one most grown in Yucatan 

 appears to be the taller form with long, narrow, prickly leaves, gener- 

 ally known to foreigners as white or gray henequen — and usually, but 

 wrongly, designated by botanists as Agave rigida elongata. A better 

 fiber plant is the entire-leaved green henequen, called Agave Sisalana 

 by Perrine, also, but to a smaller extent, grown in Yucatan, and now 

 spontaneous in tropical Florida from Perrine's importation. It is this 

 which has been introduced into the Bahamas and Hawaii, though both 

 the gray and green forms are being experimented with elsewhere. 



The utilization of a henequen plant is not effected abruptly at the 

 end of its life, as with the pulque and mezcal species, but, after a 

 wait of five or six years, it extends over a period of from seven to four- 

 teen years, during which the annual yield is said to be from 20 to 40 

 leaves per plant in several gatherings — the number of mature leaves 

 removed each year determining the longer or shorter period during 

 which cropping may continue. One of the difficulties experienced in 

 trying to cultivate henequen away from the limestone terraces of 

 Yucatan has been that it goes to seed at too early an age, for this ends 

 its usefulness instead of at the same time bringing it to fruition as is 

 the case with the plants grown for pulque or mezcal, though its ex- 

 piring energy is said to be then thrown into leaf production by cutting 

 out the scape at its inception. 



The cultivation of henequen in Yucatan is comparable with that of 

 the maguey on the plains of Apam, in that it is now chiefly in the 

 hands of large proprietors. Plantations are extensive, and the mills 

 for cleaning the fiber are proportionately large. The older leaves 

 are cut, at such intervals and in such numbers as the condition of the 

 plants is thought to warrant, and, after the prickles have been sliced 

 from their edges, trucked or carried on tram roads to the mill, where, 

 while they are still fresh, by means of some form of rotary scraper 



