Page:Life in Mexico vol 1.djvu/213

Rh plants of the immense collection made in the time of the Spanish government, when great progress was made in all the natural sciences, four hundred thousand dollars having been expended in botanical expeditions alone. Courses of botanical lectures were then given annually by the most learned professors, and the taste for natural history was universal.

El Arbol de las Manitas, (the tree of the small hands) was the most curious which we saw in the garden. The flower is of a bright scarlet, in the form of a hand, with five fingers and a thumb; and it is said that there are only three of these trees in the Republic. The gardener is an old Italian, who came over with one of the Viceroys, and though now one hundred and ten years old, and nearly bent double, possesses all his faculties. The garden is pretty from the age of the trees, and luxuriance of the flowers, but melancholy as a proof of the decay of science in Mexico. The Palace itself, now occupied by the President, formerly belonged to Cortes, and was ceded by his descendants to the government. In exchange they received the ground formerly occupied by the palace of the Aztec kings, and built on it a very splendid edifice, where the state archives are kept, and where the Monte Pio, (the office where money is lent on plate, jewels, &c.) now is, the director of which is Don Francisco Tagle, whose apartments within the building are very elegant and spacious.

The Museum, within the University, and opposite the Palace, in the plaza called del Volador, contains