THE PLANT WORLD. 99 



a more pungent steam which they take great pleasure in snuffing up as 

 the coffee is pouring into the cups. They use the whole berry, dried 

 and slight!}" bruised before being light!}' roasted over a charcoal fire. 

 It is then thrown into l)oiling water to which some of the inner husks 

 are added. Coffee so prepared is very delicate, but can probably only 

 be made where the berries are grown''. This so-cal!ed •'Sultana 

 coffee" needs no sugar. Orientals never use milk with coffee, and 

 when suo-ar is added it is done so while the liquor is makinij. Cardo- 

 mom seed, cloves, music or various other spices are sometimes used, 

 and one author sa3's tliat a pinch of soda improves the quality of the 

 drink. Turkish coffee is ground almost as fine as ffour, and served 

 black and thick. In Cuba a coarse flannel bag half full of pulvarized 

 coffee is hung over a pot. Cold water is poured over the bag at inter- 

 vals until the mass is well saturated, when the. first drippings are again 

 poured over the bag until the liquor becomes almost thick and very 

 l)Iack. One teaspoonful of this extract put into a cu}) of l)oiling water 

 or milk ''is sim})ly deliciousness itself"". 



The natives of Sumatra prefer the infusion of the leaf to that of 

 the berry, and consider it more nutritious. Europeans, however, who 

 have tried it are not unanimous in its praise, and describe it as tasting 

 like a mixture of tea and coffee. The value of coffee as a food is still 

 a debated question. Si)me time ago a learned society of France declared 

 that coffee with milk is nothing but "leather- soup," a substance abso- 

 lutely indigestible. Orientals never drink coffee at night, and it is a 

 by- word among them that if one has been long fasting, it would be 

 better to eat a piece of rock than to attempt to drink coffee. Caffeine, 

 the principle to which it owes its refreshing properties is identical with 

 the theine of tea, and is also present in cocoa, mate, guarana and other 

 plants from which drinks are made. In large doses it causes a kind of 

 intoxication. The aroma is due to an essential oil, caffeone, produced 

 during the roasting. Overdoses cause sleeplessness. These two sub- 

 stances act in such a wav that the stimulatin<2: and exhilaratino- effects 

 of the one precede the sedath-e ones of the other. He it a food or not, 

 it is certainly true that many house workers and shop-wcmien, students, 

 literary and })rofessional men eat little else at the morning meal, and 

 that it has long been acknowledoed to be the "intellectual bevera<ie. '' 

 We are not accustomed to think of it as well adapted to children, j-et 

 we have seen healthy and happy bal)ies of two years of age in the 

 Canary Islands, whose dietary was mainly cott'ec and gofio, and have 



