PLANTS CULTIVATED IN MEXICO. 325 



CHAPTER XXV. 



Statistical Account of New-Spain continued. 



Agriculture of Mexico— Banana, Manioc, and Maize— Cereal Plants- 

 Nutritive Roots and Vegetables— Agave Americana— Colonial Com- 

 modities—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 dis- 

 tribution 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 marine 

 animals of the polar regions find a temperature suited 

 to their development. It may easily be conceived 

 that, in a mountainous country like Mexico, having 

 so great a diversity of elevation, temperature, and 

 soil, the variety of indigenous productions must be 

 immense ; and that most of the plants cultivated in 

 other parts of the globe may there find situations 

 adapted to their nature. 



There, however, the principal objects of agricul- 

 ture 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 

 are nourished by the soil, and that they are inde- 

 pendent of foreign commerce. Yet agriculture is 

 by no means so flourishing as might be expected 

 from its natural resources, although considerable im- 

 provement has been effected of late years. The de- 

 pressed state of cultivation, it is true, has been attrib- 



