10 VEGETATION IN CENTRAL AMERICA. 



In a semiarid district of northwestern Guatemala thp natives do 

 not find it necessary to cut down the vegetation before burning, but 

 simply set it on fire at the end of the dry season. The corn is planted 

 immediately afterwards. The first light rains wet the loose surface 

 soil and the young corn shoots up before the other plants begin to 

 recover from the injuries of the fire. This method of burning the 

 forest without cutting is the simplest system of corn culture thus far 

 recorded. JThe alternative of cutting the forest down without burn- 

 ing is reported by Prof. H. Pittier as occurring in very humid dis- 

 tricts on the west coast of Colombia, where the felled trees do not 

 become dry enough to burn. 



In many localities the crop receives no further care than the cut- 

 ting, burning, planting, and harvesting. In some places it is cus- 

 tomary to pull out the weeds ; in others the weeds are not only pulled 

 but the earth is hoed up around the stalks, as in the United States. 

 Sometimes this is carried almost to the extent of plowing the land, 

 for the hills are made very large. The seed is planted on little 

 mounds of earth hoed from the sides of old hills, which are after- 

 wards demolished and rebuilt around the young plants. 



The most specialized form of corn culture is found on the higher 

 slopes and summits of the mountains. The corn is planted every 

 other year on narrow step-like terraces only a few feet wide. The 

 weeds that grow up in the fallow year serve as green manure. They 

 are chopped and covered in by hoeing down a part of the terrace next 

 above. (See PL III.) The contours of many of the mountains in 

 central Guatemala in the region of Cobulco and Quiche appear to 

 have been smoothed down and made regular by this laborious system, 

 which has probably been handed down from remote times. Where 

 the rains are gentle and the soil is renewed by a friable, gradually dis- 

 integrating subsoil, this affords a practically permanent system of 

 agriculture. There is no reforestation, but at the same time there is 

 no destructive erosion, and the fertility of the soil is maintained by 

 the incorporation of a regular supply of vegetable matter. Euro- 

 pean settlers have also applied it to wheat, which is raised in consid- 

 erable quantities in the region of Totonicapam and Quezaltenango, 

 where the photograph shown as Plate III was secured. 



The only other method of corn culture that approaches permanence 

 is that carried on in small gardens or yards in Indian towns. San 

 Pedro Carcha, near Coban, affords a notable example of a populous 

 community living, as it were, in one continuous, permanent corn- 

 field. The soil is deep and shows no signs of exhaustion, though it 

 has borne annual crops of corn ever since the Spaniards explored 

 the country, and probably for many centuries before. Thus some 

 of the native towns in their limited areas remain quite productive 



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