PLANTS CULTIVATED IN MEXICO. 379 
CHAPTER XXV. 
Statistical Account of New Spain continued. 
Agriculture of Mexico—Banana, Manioc, and Maize—Cereal 
Plants—Nutritive Roots and Vegetables—Agave Americana— 
Colonial Commodities—Cattle and Animal Productions. 
A counTRY extending from the sixteenth to the 
thirty-seventh degree of latitude, and presenting a 
great variety of surface, necessarily affords numerous 
modifications of climate. Such is the admirable 
distribution of heat on the globe, that the strata of 
the atmosphere become colder as we ascend, while 
those of the sea are warmest near the surface. Hence, 
under the tropics, on the declivities of the cordilleras, 
and in the depths of the ocean, the plants and ma- 
rine animals of the polar regions find a temperature 
suited to their development. It may easily be con- _ 
ceived that, in a mountainous country like Mexico, 
having so great a diversity of elevation, tempera- 
ture, and soil, the variety of indigenous productions 
must be immense ; and that most of the plants cul- 
tivated in other parts of the globe may there find 
situations adapted to their nature. 
There, however, the principal objects of agriculture 
are not the productions which European luxury 
draws from the West India Islands, but the grasses, 
nutritive roots, and the agave. The appearance of 
the land proclaims to the traveller that the natives 
