bought as low as $1.25 per acre, and from that up to several hun- 
dred dollars per acre. 
Near Mexico City the cultivation of the Maguey plant is doubt- : 
less of primary importance. Corn and beans are also important — 
crops in Mexico, and, with red peppers, form the bulk of the 
food of the lower classes — to which three-fourths of the popula 
tion of the republic belong. 
Mexico 1s a land of strong contrasts: the rich and the poor are 
farther apart even than in the United States; the several zones lying - 
one above the other offer all the vegetable /growths of tropic 
and temperate regions within a few miles of each other; and 
last, but.not least noticeable we are brought to contrast the an- 
cient Aztec, the Spanish, and the more modern styles of art and 
customs — all side by side. 
Gross ignorance and superstition stil— hold the lower classes in — 
subjection. Vice and filth equally abound, and disease of every 
description make strong inroads on the population annually. 
Strangers almost invariably become victims of some disease the — 
first year of their residence, and often, as in the wnter’s experi- 
‘ence, within the first moath of their arrival in the country. On 
the 2oth of May the writer was taken with a fever, and on the 
8th of June he was glad to return to California to recuperate. 
ne CE: OrcuTr 
: EDITORIAL. 
After several months of field work the editor again takes his 
pen in hand. With his botanical work in Mexico so unceri- 
moniously cut short he cannot hope to offer much that is new to 
the literature of Mexico, but in the few weeks of active work in 
the City of Mexico much information was gleaned that = be 
as new to our readers as to us. 
Withal, the most valuable lesson learned, and the most salou 
information gained, is that California is the most beautiful and 
healthful land known to mankind, and has nothing to fear for 
many years from Mexican competition in the growing of fruits 
- or flowers; but on the other hand Mexico may be made one e of 
a reaas customers of the Golden State. 
