610 CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE NATIONAL HERBARIUM. 
as cacao among the native Indians of Guatemala. Though not con- 
sidered the equal of cacao in quality, patashte is bought readily by 
the Indians and would undoubtedly find a place in commerce if it 
could be produced cheaply. Cacao and patashte are among the few 
articles that can be sold to the Indians for money. But not much 
cacao is grown in Guatemala and the coffee planters are often obliged 
to import cacao from the West Indies or from Ceylon to sell to their 
Indian laborers. The scanty production of cacao seems the more 
remarkable because the early accounts show that the Spanish con- 
querers found this tree in cultivation on a rather extensive scale by 
the Indians of Guatemala. A statement by Acosta, published near 
the end of the sixteenth century, makes it plain that Guatemala was 
recognized at that time as the chief center of production of cacao: 
The tree whereon this fruite growes is of reasonable bignesse, and well fashioned; 
it is so tender, that to keep it from the burning of the Sunne, they plante neere unto 
it a great tree, which serves only to shade it, and they call it the mother of Cacao. 
There are plantations where they are grown like to the vines and olive trees of Spaine. 
The province where there is greatest trade in cacao is Guatimala. There grows none 
in Peru, but this country yields Coca, respecting which there is another still greater 
superstition.! 
Since the patashte grows much more rapidly than cacao and 
develops eventually into a much larger tree, the possibility of secur- 
ing profits from plantations of patashte has not altogether escaped 
the attention of enterprising landowners in Central America. That 
the patashte might serve as a shade tree in cacao plantations was an 
especially attractive idea, since most of the trees used for shade pur- 
poses yield nothing of direct value to the planter. The largest 
experiment in the planting of patashte known to us is in the Senaht 
district of the Department of Alta Verapaz, in eastern Guatemala, 
on the Trece Aguas Estate of Don Ricardo Fickert-Forst. Agri- 
culturally speaking, the patashte plantation has not met expecta- 
tions, the soil conditions having proved rather unfavorable, but the 
experiment afforded an unusually favorable opportunity of compar- 
ing the behavior of the two trees under the same conditions of growth. 
Another possibility, as yet apparently untried, is that patashte 
might prove useful as a stock for the vegetative propagation of supe- 
rior varieties of cacao. The greater vigor of growth shown by the 
patashte tree might make budding easier and more successful. Trees 
grafted on patashte might also grow more rapidly or be better adapted 
to special conditions, or to higher altitudes. At Trece Aguas the 
patashte trees seemed to have thriven better in the coffee plantations 
at altitudes of over 600 meters than in the lower valleys where they 
were planted with cacao. 
‘The Natural and Moral History of the Indies, 1590. Hakluyt Society edition 1: 
245. 1880. 
