724 ON THE VOLCANO OP TAAL, 



guava has been a matter of controversy, but the question has been 

 confined as to what part of tropical America or the West Indies 

 it belonged. It has been pretty well decided, however, that it 

 came from the south portion of the continent. Probably there are 

 few plants which germinate so easily and so rapidly, and it fructifies 

 usually in the third or fourth year ; its area has thus spread, and 

 is still spreading, by naturalisation in those tropical countries which 

 are neither very hot nor very damp. There are about 60 species 

 of the genus Psidmm known. Their fleshy and somewhat aromatic 

 fruits especially attract frugivorous birds, which carry their seeds 

 to places far from cultivation. There is scarcely any fruit which 

 germinates so easily, and requires such little care in its cultivation. 

 I. Acosta, in the " Histoire Naturelle et Morale des Indes Orientales 

 et Occidentales" (French translation, 1598, p. 175), tells us that in 

 mountains of San Domingo and other West Indian Islands the 

 land was entirely covered with guavas, and he adds that the 

 natives said that there were no such trees in the islands before the 

 arrival of the Spaniards, who brought them. De Candolle, in his 

 " Origin of Cultivated Plants," (p. 241), from whence I have taken 

 the above quotation, gives references to Hernandez, Piso and 

 Marcgraf, all early historians of New Spain, The Brazils and Peru, 

 to prove that the guava was not known until the Spaniards 

 discovei-ed America. The name of the guava is probably Peruvian, 

 and was formerly guajavos or guajava. 



There can be very little question, therefore, that the guava was 

 brought to the Philippines by the Spaniards, and it could hardly 

 be growing wild or widespread in the islands until the close of the 

 1 6th century. This would give a very recent date to the tufas in 

 which the fossil leaf impressions were found. I have no particulars 

 as to where, or in what numbers, the specimens were discovered, 

 nor how deep down in the ash deposit. We may presume that 

 they were not deep down, and that they belonged to some of the 

 destruction caused by the most recent eruptions of the volcano. 



This brings us to the question as to what was the state of the 

 volcano when the Spaniards first took possession of these islands. 

 First of all it must be remembered that Luzon was not the earliest 



