202 RULES AND SUGGESTIONS IN FARMING. 



should possess about the same mean temperature, and 

 produce the same natural and artificial growth, as Kings- 

 ton, upon the Hudson, though the extremes, both of heat 

 and cold, are probably greater at the northern than they 

 are at the southern point.* These data are assumed from 

 recollection, and may not be precisely correct. 



25. The means of preserving, and of augmenting, the 

 fertihty of the soil, are sufficiently indicated in the pre- 

 ceding suggestions. They consist mainly in manuring, 



* "All the western part of the intendancy of Vera Cruz," sajs 

 Humboldt, in his New Spain, " forms the declivity of the Cordilleras 

 of Anahuac. In the space of a day, the inhabitants descend from the 

 regions of eternal snow to the plains in the vicinity of the sea, where 

 the most suffocating heat prevails. The admirable order with which 

 different tribes of vegetables rise one above another, by strata as it 

 were, is nowhere more perceptible than in ascending from the port of 

 Vera Cruz to the table-land of Perote. We see there the physiogno- 

 my of the country, the aspect of the sky, the form of plants, the fig- 

 ures of animals, the manners of the inhabitants, and the kind of culti- 

 vation followed by them, assume a diiferent appearance at every step 

 of our progress. 



" As we ascend. Nature appears gradually less animated, the beauty 

 of the vegetable forms diminishes, the shoots become less succulent, 

 and the flowers less colored. The aspect of the 3Iexican oak quiets 

 the alarms of a traveller newly landed at Vera Cruz. Its presence de- 

 monstrates to him that he has left behind him the zone so justly dread- 

 ed by the people of the north, under which the yellow fever exercises 

 its ravages in New Spain. This inferior limit of oaks warns the colonist 

 who inhabits the central table-land how far he may descend towards 

 the coast, without dread of the mortal disease of the vomito. Forests of 

 liquid amber, near Xalapa, announce by the freshness of their verdure 

 that this is the elevation at which the clouds, suspended over the ocean, 

 come in contact with the basaltic summits of the Cordilleras, A little 

 higher, near la Bandarila, the nutritive fruit of the banana-tree comes 

 no longer to maturity. In this foggy and cold region, therefore, want 

 spurs on the Indian to labor, and excites his industry. At the height 

 of San Miguel, pines begin to mingle with the oaks, which are found 

 by the traveller as high as the elevated plains of Perote, where he be- 

 holds the delightful aspect of fields sown with wheat. Eight hundred 

 metres higher, (two thousand six hundred feet,) the coldness of 

 the climate will no longer admit of the vegetation of oaks ; and pines 

 alone cover the rock, whose summits enter the zone of eternal snow. 

 Thus in a few hours the naturalist, in this miraculous country, ascends 

 the whole scale of vegetation, from the heliconiaand the banana-plant, 

 whose glossy leaves swell out into extraordinary dimensions, to the 

 stunted parachyma of the resinous trees." 



