330 CEREAL PLANTS 



mortality among the children. Fowls, turkeys, and 

 even cattle suffer, so that the traveller can find 

 neither eggs nor poultry. Scarcities of less severity 

 are not uncommon, and are especially felt in the mining 

 districts, where the vast numbers of mules employed 

 in the process of amalgamation annually consume 

 an enormous quantity of maize. 



Numerous varieties of food are derived from this 

 plant. The ear is eaten raw or boiled. The grain 

 when beaten affords a nutritive bread called arepa, 

 and the meal is employed in making soups or gruels, 

 which are mixed with sugar, honey, and sometimes 

 even pounded potatoes. Many kinds of drink are 

 also prepared from it, some resembling beer, others 

 cider. In the valley of Tolucca the stalks are 

 squeezed between cylinders, and from the fermented 

 juice a spirituous liquor, called pulquede mahis, is pro- 

 duced. 



In favourable years Mexico yields a much larger 

 quantity than is necessary for its own consumption; 

 but as this grain affords less nutritive substance in 

 proportion to its bulk than the corn of Europe, and 

 as the roads are generally difficult, obstacles are 

 presented to its transportation, which, however, will 

 diminish when the country is more improved. 



We come now to the cereal plants which have 

 been conveyed from the Old to the New Continent. 

 A negro slave of Cortes found among the rice which 

 served to maintain the Spanish army three or four 

 particles of wheat, which were sown, we may sup- 

 pose, before the year 1500. A Spanish lady, Maria 

 d'Escobar, carried a few grains to Lima, and their 

 produce was distributed for three years among the 

 new colonists, each receiving twenty or thirty seeds. 

 At Quito the first European corn was sown near the 

 convent of St. Francis by Father Jose Rixi, a native 

 of Flanders, and the monks still show, as a precious 

 relic, the earthen vessel in which the original wheat 

 came from Europe. " Why," asks our author, 



