34 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 125 



leather band (mecapal) across his forehead. Arranged around the 

 cacaste and on top of it are the heavier and bulkier items. Very often 

 the wife and children will accompany the salesman, and they too will 

 carry loads, although not so heavy and not arranged in cacastes. These 

 men (cargadores) are always to be seen on all Guatemalan roads but 

 are more numerous near towns having a market day or fiesta. Many 

 men living just above the disease zone in the Municipality of Yepocapa 

 spend several weeks at a time on the infected fincas selling their surplus 

 of beans, corn, or other crops. Such people could very possibly be- 

 come infected during their extended sojourns in the onchocerciasis 

 zones and thereby extend the limits of the disease. 



PLANT ASSOCIATIONS 



As already discussed under the description of the finca, the areas in 

 which the coffee fincas have been developed mainly consist of dense, 

 temperate to semitropical rain forests. The terrain along the volcanic 

 Pacific slopes is extremely broken, with gentle to steep inclines, 

 formidable canyons, and numerous and extensive ridges. According 

 to the particular locality, the earth is arenaceous to rocky. The soil 

 layer very often is 5 to 18 feet in depth. It is very fertile and its vol- 

 canic origin seems to peculiarly favor the growth of coffee. The for- 

 ests support abundant tree ferns as well as Cedrela sp. (cedro or 

 Spanish cedar), Trichilia havanensis Jacq. and T. hirta L, (cedrillo), 

 Ceiba pentandra (L.) Gaertn. (ceiba), and other trees. Intertwined 

 with these thick stands of trees are the endless number of lianas and 

 other vines with their complex network of hanging roots. The trees, 

 shrubs, dead logs, and rocks are extensively covered with ferns, 

 orchids, mosses, and lichens. These, together with the pendent roots 

 which sometimes reach the ground, make the forest dense and almost 

 impenetrable (pi. 5, fig. 2). This environment, in places where the 

 foliage is particularly heavy, is often so dark that it is difficult to make 

 out clearly the narrow paths beneath, which must be frequented by the 

 field workers to reach the cafetales (coffee fields) in which they work. 

 The rain forest is kept relatively humid by the ever-present running 

 water. Small trickles from underground streams emerge and soon 

 reenter the earth. Along the sides of the slopes are found larger 

 streams that originate where the water table concides with the natural 

 slope of the ground. The latter flow down the slopes, cutting deep 

 channels where the grade is more pronounced, and usually enter larger 

 rivers that invariably flow along the bottoms of the valleys. 



It was thought that those streams serving as breeding places of the 

 anthropophilic species of Simuliidae might contain a preponderance 



