The area of forest has only been seriously diminished in the west, and amounted to 2030 sq. m. in 1904. Besides rubber, it yields many valuable dye-woods and cabinet-woods, such as cedar, mahogany and logwood. Fruits, grain and medicinal plants are obtained in great abundance, especially where the soil is largely of volcanic origin, as in the Altos and Sierra Madre. Parts of the Peten district are equally fertile, maize in this region yielding two hundredfold from unmanured soil. The vegetable products of Guatemala include coffee, cocoa, sugar-cane, bananas, oranges, vanilla, aloes, agave, ipecacuanha, castor-oil, sarsaparilla, cinchona, tobacco, indigo and the wax-plant (_Myrica cerifera_). _Inhabitants._--The inhabitants of Guatemala, who tend to increase rapidly owing to the high birth-rate, low mortality, and low rate of emigration, numbered in 1903 1,842,134, or more than one-third of the entire population of Central America. Fully 60% are pure Indians, and the remainder, classed as _Ladinos_ or "Latins" (i.e. Spaniards in speech and mode of life), comprise a large majority of half-castes (_mestizos_) and civilized Indians and a smaller proportion of whites. It includes a foreign population of about 12,000 Europeans and North Americans, among them being many Jews from the west of the United States. There are important German agricultural settlements, and many colonists from north Italy who are locally called _Tiroleses_, and despised by the Indians for their industry and thrift. About half the births among the Indians and one-third among the whites are illegitimate.