32 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
Avocado in Guatemala,” and a lengthy 
paper published in the Annual Report of 
the California Avocado Association for 
1917. Our next undertaking was a de¬ 
tailed survey of the more important avo¬ 
cado-growing regions of Mexico, most of 
which had already received attention at 
the hands of Californians in search of de¬ 
sirable varieties for culture in that State. 
Mexico and Guatemala have, in fact, sup¬ 
plied practically all of the avocados which 
have been planted in California up to the 
present time. 
In November of 1919 I sailed from the 
United States upon the third voyage of 
avocado exploration, this time with the in¬ 
tention of covering all the important terri¬ 
tory which had not yet been touched, and 
thus completing the survey. I should 
mention, at this point, that the exploration 
of eastern Brazil carried out in 1913 and 
1914 by Messrs. A. D. Shamel, P. H. 
Dorsett and myself, while primarily un¬ 
dertaken for the purpose of studying the 
navel orange in its native home, served 
also to give us a sufficient knowledge of 
the avocados of that part of South Amer¬ 
ica, and to show us that there was nothing 
of great interest there, so far as desirable 
varieties were concerned. Later, in 1914 
and 1915, I was able to visit Cuba and 
Porto Rico, and to study the avocados of 
these two islands. We therefore had left 
before us, when I started upon this last 
voyage, the Central American countries 
south of Guatemala, and the western part 
of South America; certain portions of the 
latter region, in particular, were terra in¬ 
cognita so far as avocados were con¬ 
cerned, and I looked forward to an inter¬ 
esting, though somewhat long journey. 
My first stop was in Guatemala, which 
could scarcely be passed by, since we were 
in need of a further stock of seedling 
plants, and there was no better place to se¬ 
cure the necessary seeds. I had completed 
my work, and was about to proceed south¬ 
ward when I was overtaken by an acci¬ 
dent and laid up in the hospital for a 
month, during which time a revolution 
broke out. Things finally quieted down 
so that I was able to pick up my baggage, 
which I had stored in Guatemala City 
when I was sent to the hospital, and go 
through Salvador, which seemed to have 
nothing to offer in the way of valuable 
avocados, to Costa Rica, where I thought 
I might find something of interest. I was 
not disappointed, for on the slopes of the 
volcano Irazu, Oton Jibenez and I dis¬ 
covered a wild avocado which we believe 
may be the prototype of our cultivated 
West Indian and Guatemalan varieties. 
This question of the wild avocado has 
always interested me greatly. I have seen 
the wild Mexican avocado growing on the 
slopes of the volcano Orizaba in Mexico, 
and I have occasionally run across it in the 
mountanis of Guatemala, where it may 
not, however, be indigenous; but I have 
never felt that the West Indian and Gua¬ 
temalan varieties could have been derived 
from this small, thin-skinned, Mexican 
species. When we found the wild avo¬ 
cado of Irazu, therefore, I was altogether 
delighted, for this species may be not only 
the wild prototype of the cultivated sorts, 
but also—and this of more practical im- 
