158 EXTRACT. 



the garden is under the management of Mr. Lambie. In this 

 instance, the whole height of the flower-stalk, was only the half 

 of that of Mr. Yates ; and the blossoms were few indeed in com- 

 parison ; yet they came to great perfection, and the plant made 

 a very noble appearance 



But the great size and strange form of this plant and the rarity 

 of its blossoming in our collections, are not the only circumstan- 

 ces which recommend the American Aloe to attention. It yields 

 a drink and a fibre of such extensive use in the New World, 

 that it is reckoned, next to the maize and the potatoe, the most 

 valuable of all products which Nature has lavished on the moun- 

 tain population of eequinoctial America ; and no where, perhaps, 

 is it held in greater esteem than Mexico, according to M. Hum- 

 boldt, from whose " Essai politique sur la lloyaume de la Nou- 

 velle Espagne," I extract the following interesting particulars on 

 this subject ; 



''Scarcely," says this distinguished Philospher, ,; does there exist a tribe 

 of savages in the world, who are not acquainted with the art of preparing 

 some kind of vegetable drink. Tiie wretched hordes which wander in the 

 forests of Guiana, extract I'roni the fruit of different palms, a beverege, which 

 is as palatable as the European orgeat. The inhabitants of Easter Island, 

 confined to a mass of barren springless rocks, mingle the expressed juice of 

 the sugar cane with the briny water of the sea. Most civilized nations de- 

 rive their drink from the same plants as afford them food, and whose roots 

 and seeds contain the saccharine principle mingled with the farinaceous. 

 In Southern and Eastern Asia this is rice ; in Africa and Australia the roots 

 of ferns, or of some arums; while in the north of Europe, the cerealia afford 

 both bread and fermented liquors. Few are the instances of certain plants 

 being cultivated solely with a view to extract beverages from them. Vine- 

 yards only exist west of the Indus ; in the. Old World, and in the golden 

 age of Greece, the culture of the grape was confined to the countries lying 

 between the Oxus and the Euphrates, in Asia Minor, and in Western 

 Europe. In other parts of the world, nature certainly produces several 

 species of wild vine ; but no where has man attempted to collect them around 

 them, and improve their quality by cultivation. 



" The New Continent presents the instance of a people who derived their 

 drinks not only from the farinaceous and sugary substance of maize, manioc, 

 and bananas, or from the pulp of some species of juimosa, but who cultivated 

 a plant of the pine apple family for the express purpose of converting its 

 juice into spirituous liquor. In the vast plains in the interior of Mexico, 

 there are large tracts of country where the eye discerns nothing but fields 

 planted with the pittes or maguay ( Agave Americana). This plant, with its 

 leathery and (horny leaves, and which, with the cactus opuntia, has become 

 naturalized ever since the sixteenth century, throughout Southern Europe, 

 in the Canary Islands, anc on the African coasts, imparts a most peculiar 

 character to the Mexican landscape. What can be more strongly contrasted 

 than a field of yellow wheat, a plantation of the glaucous agave, and a grove 

 of bananas, whose lustrous leaves always preserve their own tender and 

 delicate hue of green ! Thus does man, in all latitudes, by introducing and 

 multiplying the various vegetable productions, modify at his pleasure the 

 aspect of the country around him ! 



'* In the Spanish colonies there are several sorts of maguay deserving 

 of careful cultivation; some indeed, which, by the length of the stamens, 

 the mode of division of the corolla, and form of the stigma, may, perhaps, 

 belong to separate genera. The maguay or metl, which is grown in Mexico 



