362 
GUATEMALA. 
thousand plants to the acre should yield, at six cents 
per pine, a hundred and twenty dollars the first crop, 
and a hundred and eighty dollars afterwards. Whether 
these fine fruits can profitably drive the inferior pineapples 
of the West Indies from our markets, is yet doubtful. 
A wild pine, in which the fruit is not crowded into a 
compact head, but is more acid and of less flavor, is 
common in the mountains 3 but I have never seen this 
species offered for sale. 
Nutmegs. — While I do not know of a dozen trees of 
the nutmeg, outside of the Chocon plantation, the soil and 
climate are admirably suited to this tree. The nutmeg 
requires at least eighty inches of rainfall per annum, 
begins to bear when eight or ten years old, and improves 
for a century. The first few years the yield is from one 
to five thousand nuts, of from sixty-eight to one hundred 
and twenty to the pound. In the Botanic Gardens, Trini¬ 
dad, the net yield per tree has been more than twenty 
pounds (say eighteen hundred nuts), with an average 
price of fifty-four cents per pound. This would amount 
to three hundred and fifty dollars per acre. The value of 
the mace is additional. In the Chocon region the trees 
have not yet matured ; but there seems no doubt that the 
conditions of growth and fruitfulness are better than on 
the Island of Trinidad, and with these trees planted 
thirty feet apart, or forty-five to an acre, allowing one 
third to be male or barren trees, we should have at least 
1,600 x 30 = 48,000 nutmegs to the acre. Averaging the 
nuts at ninety to the pound, the crop would weigh five 
hundred and thirty-three pounds, and at fifty cents per 
pound would amount to two hundred and sixty-six dol¬ 
lars. Considering the less expense for care this perma- 
