i 
[ 300 ] ae 
culture. ‘To the mere botanist, even the kinds of plants which he absur 
terms “permanent varieties,” are too insignificant for special description ; 
but to the actual agriculturist, their nominal varieties are practical species, 
frequently much more important, for cultivation, than the different species 
of the books. lying on botanists alone, we should be foreed to admit 
are mere varieties of each other! Hence, collections should be made of 
; “yin £ 
turnip and a flat radish, between persons believing them to be identical 
roots; and that agriculturists would be infinitely more edified by a state- 
gated the general opinion that it is the very same species as the Ma ey, 
Henequen, which is cultivated in the hot plains of Yucatan, for the coarse 
fibres of its developed leaves, called Sosquil, or Sisal hemp; and as the Istle 
which is propagated in the shady forests of Goazacoalcos, for the fine fibres 
of its long leaves; called Pita, or tropical flax ! 
‘The subseriber has long furnished sufficient facts and arguments to satisfy 
practical men, that the Istle does not belong even to the same c 
that the Maguey de pulque, and the Henequen de sosquil are, at least, ve 
i t species from the ve Ameri 
a; but as botanical parrots still 
the department that, by the flowering of a plant of the Yashqui, a ind of 
Henequen, in its fifteenth year, he has acquired the power of demonstratin: 
uically, not merely that it is an entirely different: species, but that its 
ihe charact which may be sufficient to form an entirely 
Wee F 
