IV. Gardening in Spanish North America or Mexico
903. The Mexicans were extremely well skilled in the cultivation of kitchen and other gardens, in which they planted, with great regularity and taste, fruit trees and medicinal plants and flowers. The lust of these were much in demand ; bunches of flowers being presented to persons of rank, kings, lords, and ambassadors, and also used in temples and private oratories. In the ninth chapter of Humboldt's work will be found an ample account of the useful plants of Mexico. It is singular that the potato, which one would have imagined should have been introduced from the southern continent to Mexico, should have been first carried there from Old Spain. It is not, Humboldt says, a native of Peru, nor to be found between latitudes 12ﾦ and 50ﾦ.
