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ANNUAL REPORT 1918 AND 1919 



be splendid. The largest ones weigh about two pounds; the flesh is clean, 

 deep yellow in color, and of rich flavor. The seed, while rather large, is 

 not more so than in the West Indian varieties of Florida and Cuba. I 

 would say that the avocados of Tapachula are in general fully equal to 

 those of the latter regions, both in size and in quality. I have not found 

 anything so superior, however, as to merit introduction into the United 

 States. 



The Mexican race is naturally of more interest to Californians than 

 the West Indian. We have amply demonstrated that it is well adapted to 

 California soil and climate, and it has been our hope that better varieties 

 than those we now possess might be found, in order to make the cultivation 

 of this race more attractive than it is at present. I will reserve my remarks 

 on this subject for a separate paragraph, and here attempt to give an idea 

 of the character of the fruits of this race which I have examined. 



Knowing that Queretaro was one of the principal regions for the cul- 

 tivation of this race, if not the most important of all, I visited it v^th the 

 object of examining the fruits to see if any could be found superior to those 

 we already have in California. The result was rather disappointing, for I 

 found in general the fruits are too small to make them of interest to us, and 

 good varieties are exceedingly scarce among them. To give you an idea 

 of their character let me compare them to some of the varieties in California. 

 The Northrup and the Ganter are both considerably larger than the ma- 

 jority of them; in fact I found only a few varieties which come up to the 

 Northrup and Ganter in size. Most of them are not over three inches long, 

 and practically all have very large seeds. It is this characteristic, in fact, 

 which is the greatest defect of the Mexican race, from my point of view. A 

 fruit of six or eight ounces, if it had a very small seed, would be quite 

 acceptable, but most of the Mexican varieties of this weight have objection- 

 ably large seeds. The quality of practically all the fruits I examined was 

 good. Very few of them contained any fiber, and they were all rich in 

 flavor. I cannot help thinking that their small size was in a certain measure 

 due to lack of cultural attention, and that if the entire Canyada of Quere- 

 taro could receive good cultivation for about two years every avocado in it 

 would just about double in size. 



There are a great many seedling trees of this race in southern Cali- 

 fornia which produce small fruits, about the size of hen's eggs, black or 

 green in color, usually obovoid or pyriform in shape. All of you are fa- 

 miliar with some of these seedlings ; they are used principally by the nursery- 

 men as a source of seed. Most of the avocados of Queretaro are precisely 

 of this character ; but they are held in much greater esteem by the Mexicans 

 than they are by the Californians. They are here considered to be quite 

 satisfactory. 



All of the chininis which I have seen in Mexico have been of very 

 inferior quality. The only ones I have ever found to be worthy of propaga- 

 tion were two or three in northern Guatemala. The common chinini of 

 southern Mexico is a fruit about five inches long, slender, often with a well 

 defined neck. It has a thick skin and contains a very large seed; between 

 skin and seed is a layer of pale brown flesh through which run numerous 

 tough fibers. The flavor is rich and oily, resembling that of the ripe cocoa- 

 nut. A poor variety of the chinini is not a fruit which would appeal to a 

 North American, but a good one is a worthy rival of the avocado. 



