The traveller in Mexico to-day sees growing all along the sides of the railway huge stiff bunches of the _Agave Americana_. The leaves are long and pointed with prickles along the edge, growing in a tuft like huge artichokes. Their blue, rather than green, surface has a whitish bloom over it, which makes the plants look as if they had been made of tin and painted some time ago. Sometimes the leaves are very large, and the bunches enormous. When the time comes a stem shoots up from the heart of the tuft to a great height, putting out branches at the top, which blossom in a cluster of yellowish flowers. These branches are symmetrical, and the effect is like a lofty branched candlestick, sometimes forty feet high. The blossoms fade; the dying stalk, like the framework of last year's fireworks, remains a long time; and when these plants, as they often are, are set along the railways, the line of tall bare stems looks not unlike a row of telegraph poles. The blue tin leaves are ever green, and last through many a year. This agave, or American aloe, is the century-plant, so called from the popular error that it blossoms only once in a hundred years. It is only true so far that each plant blossoms only once and then dies. In tropical regions this process proceeds rapidly; in colder countries, where it is raised artificially, it takes a long time to complete its perfect growth. The agave is native in the whole region between the tropics of America, where it flourishes from the sandy soil by the sea to table-lands and mountain altitudes. From its natural region it has been transplanted everywhere, and even in cold climates it is cultivated as a green-house plant. In Spain, where it was early transplanted, among the other novelties which the Conquistadores introduced from their new land, it is absolutely at home. Its lofty candelabra are an ornament to Andalusian roadsides, and a barrier for wandering cattle. In Spain it is called _pita_, which must be a different variety, if not a totally distinct genus from the common plant of Mexico, for the use of its juices for a beverage is totally unknown in the old country, and this certainly would have been discovered there if such properties had not been wanting in the Spanish plant. For the agave of the Mexicans is their _maguey_, from which they extract pulque, the national beverage. The agave has served them for many other purposes, from the earliest times. Its bruised leaves, properly dressed and polished, make a sort of paper; its leaves furnish a strong protecting thatch for the roofs of houses; thread can be drawn from its long fibrous texture; the thorns furnish a fair substitute for the pin and needle; and the root, well prepared, is nutritious and palatable as food.