THE PULQUE OF MEXICO. 



By Walter Hough. 



Assistant Curator Department of Anthropology, U. S. National Museum. 



Pulque is a fermented liquiil made from the sap of the maguey, or 

 agave, commonly known to English speaking people as the century 

 plant. The production of the beverage is confined to ]\Iexico and 

 to those parts of that country where species of the agave suitable 

 for making pulque are found. 



Some years ago the writer, at the instance of Dr. G. Brown Goode, 

 began a study of the beverages of mankind, and one paper, relating 

 to kava drinking,'^ has been published. 



The study of pulque was prosecuted during an extended journey 

 through Mexico in 1899 in company with Dr. J. N. Rose, who was 

 engaged in the collection of botanical data of the agaves. Tliis 

 field work was supplemented by an examination of the specimens 

 in the United States National Museum, collected l)y Dr. Edward 

 Palmer, to whom the writer is much indebted for information con- 

 cerning them. 



The agaves flourish in the warm southwestern portions of the 

 United States and range from the temperate to the tropical zone in 

 Mexico. There are numerous species, distributed in diverse situations 

 with regard to elevation, temperature, moisture, and soil. Originally, 

 it appears, the cultivated agave was a desert form, inhabiting rocky, 

 sterile places or dry sandy plains, as shown by the fleshy, thorn- 

 armed leaves having chitinous epidermis which resists evaporation. 



Botanically, the species are difficult of classification, this genus 

 being easy of modification through change of environment and 

 cultivation. It is perhaps impossible to determine accurately the 

 original forms of the highly cultivated species, which may have 

 differentiated as much as maize from its udld ancestor. It is likely 

 that the ancestor of the pulque agave is represented by a ^\dld form 

 growing in the mountains of Mexico; but taking the cultivated agaves 

 as a whole, they are derived from a number of species. Most of 

 the agaves, both wild and cultivated, have many uses other than 



« Kava Drinking as Practiced by the Papuans and Polynesians. Smithsonian 

 MiscelUineous Collections (Quarterly issue), XLVII, Aug. G, 1904, pp. 85-92. 



Proceedings U. S. National Museum, Vol. XXXIII— No. 1579. 



577 



