acteristics including pubescence, coarse seminal root sys- 
tems and susceptibility to lodging and smut. A separate 
interpretation for each of these phenomena has already 
been suggested and we are now ready to draw the imagi- 
nary picture into which these more or less unrelated facts 
can be integrated. 
At some time after maize had been domesticated in 
South America, a variety or a small group of varieties of 
cultivated maize was introduced into Central America. 
The ears of this maize were short and tapering, the cob 
was soft, the kernels fairly large but variable in size and 
very irregularly arranged upon the rachis. The plants 
exhibited pubescent leaf-sheaths and were decidedly sus- 
ceptible to smut and lodging and this maize was satisfac- 
tory for culture only at high altitudes. We do not know 
whether the culture of this maize was ever widespread ; 
at the present time it seems to be confined in Guatemala 
to the Departments of Quezaltenango, Totonicapan, El 
Quiche, Huehuetenango and probably San Marcos, and 
in Mexico to the State of Chiapas. We cannot determine 
whether it was grown at lower altitudes in this region 
but if it was it has now been completely replaced. 
Some years or perhaps centuries after its introduction, 
ina small area in Huehuetenango, this South American 
maize hybridized with a species of 'Tripsacum by which 
some of the maize fields were surrounded. The first gen- 
eration hybrid backcrossing once or repeatedly to its 
maize parent gave rise to a new plant, teosinte, in which 
the chromosome morphology closely resembled that of 
maize, except for certain pycnotic enlargements on the 
chromosomes imparted by the Tripsacum parent together 
with several simply inherited morphological characters® 
> Langham (11) has shown that in crosses of Durango teosinte and 
maize, two of the important characters which distinguish maize from 
both teosinte and Tripsacum (paired spikelets and polystichous pis- 
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