A careful writer has said that the same amount of land that will produce enough wheat to support two persons will raise enough bananas to sustain fifty persons. The food value of the banana and plantain, which is larger and perhaps more nutritious than the former, has never been fully exploited. They make an excellent meal which is very nutritious when dried and ground. At the present time most of the profit goes to the transportation company which holds a monopoly of the carrying trade. They are sold to the fruit company for less than half what they are worth in this country. A vessel will carry twenty thousand bunches in addition to a cargo of passengers, and the loss on the fruit does not exceed fifteen per cent. The fact that bananas can not be kept for any length of time, except in cold storage, requires their early marketing; and the further fact that they will not stand much handling requires their shipment in vessels especially constructed for their transportation. These vessels are all owned by one fruit-buying trust. It is no wonder that this monopoly has proved very profitable to its owners. Now that the new railroad is opened up and regular trains are running, this rich banana soil ought to be rapidly developed, since the market for this delicious fruit is constantly increasing and the supply has never yet exceeded the demand. Instead of a million bunches, Guatemala ought to export five or ten million bunches each year. All over the world the fruits, as well as other articles of the tropics, are coming into greater demand each year. In 1908 the United States imported fruits and other food products of the tropics, not including coffee, to the value of more than two dollars for each man, woman and child in the country. Sugar was by far the largest item on the list, bananas second, and cacao a close rival for that distinction. More than 37,000,000 bunches of bananas were consumed in the United States during that year, an increase of fifty per cent in five years. The general use of the banana is of very recent growth, for it has come into use in Northern climates almost entirely within the last quarter of a century. The Pacific slope of Guatemala, although much less in extent, is far ahead of the Gulf side in cultivation and is far more thickly settled. The chief export from this district is coffee which is cultivated everywhere at an altitude of from one thousand to six thousand feet. The soil is about the same as that of Chiapas, the adjoining Mexican state, which also produces a fine quality of coffee. Thousands of bags of coffee are shipped from the ports of Ocos, Champerico and San Jose, in Guatemala, and San Benito, in Mexico, which is only a few miles from the border. Coffee is not a natural product of this soil, but was first introduced into the New World by a Spanish priest in Guatemala, who obtained the seed in Arabia. It was found adapted to the soil and climate, and coffee is to-day by far the most valuable export, the