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184
spala has resulted in an intensive horticultural development in these regions. Coffee, fruit and vegetables are all grown more extensively in such spots than in less favored regions. Among other great trees which abound in the aguacate is one of the commonest:

Since an occasional yielding aguacate is of superior quality, at least when grown under favorable cultural conditions, it is natural that in such spots as Antigua, San Cristóbal, Orosi, and Patalagache, where the land-water conditions are eminently favorable and when there are many trees, there should be found a larger number of good aguacates than in other places where the environment is less favorable, and where there are a small number of trees, or in other words, fewer chances.

Cook and others have spoken of the intimate knowledge which the Indians of tropical America often possess concerning the plants which they live among, and have used. A close association with the Indians on the part of botanists, in order to gather from them what their long experience has taught them.

It has seemed to me from a brief association with the Indians of northern Guatemala, that their knowledge of wild plants had not been overestimated by Cook. They have a name for nearly every tree in the forest known to them, concerning its habits, and frequently possess full details likewise concerning the medicinal or other uses to which the plant can be put.

Their knowledge of horticultural methods and practices, however, is not so deep in their knowledge of wild plants and their uses. Along agricultural lines they have their well established practices, which seem largely to be traditions, and still prepare the ground, plant, and cultivate their corn by the same methods employed before the conquest. Their horticultural practices seem even less clearly defined than those pertaining to agriculture, the production of the great staple crop, corn, naturally receiving more attention than