Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 70.djvu/228

224 affection for their children is an unfailing and very pleasing sight, but the poverty of their homes, only too evident to even the less prying sight-seer, is scarcely compensated for even in this affection—which appears to me the best quality of the Mexican peon.

The lecheguilla agave well pictures a division of the genus in which the flowers are clustered along the upper part of the scape instead of being disposed on the branches of a candelabrum-like top. Of this type is further the 'guapilla'—A. falcata—a very narrow-leaved small species of the region about Saltillo, which also yields good ixtle.

The minor uses of agaves are hardly worthy of detailed mention in comparison with their commercially important use as a source of fiber and alcohol. These uses, however, are many, as I have already said. Under the name 'amole' one may buy in most Mexican market places either leaf bases of agaves like A. filifera or,