Nov. 2, 1885.] 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



365 



coffee-palaces supply them. There are some temper- 

 ance lestaurants where proper care is taken over 

 the production of the tea and coffee ; and in these 

 places the management reaps its reward in tha 

 accession of custom which ensues on the supply 

 of a good article. As a general rule, however, it 

 is lamentably true that the stuff' which is sold as 

 coffee in coffee-houses and coffee-palaces would 

 fail to be recognized as such by a discerning Arab. 

 It is, to begin with, not pure coffee at all, but 

 adulterated either with chicory, which is not so 

 bad, or with burnt sugar wojked up into the 

 form of " caramel," which makes it both nasty 

 and injurious to health. This so-called coffee is 

 handed round to customers in large cups at a 

 small price, an<l most of them would probably be 

 heartily glad if the cups were smaller and the 

 a)nount of coffee essence proportionately increased. 

 The working man cannot be rationally expected to 

 prefer this weak and washy compound to a glass 

 of ale, although the consequences of continued 

 potations of the .'latter are more disastrous than 

 those which follow drinking any amount of weak 

 coffee and warm water. It would certainly be 

 difficult either to cheer or to inebriate anybody on 

 the stuff which is unblushingly sold as coffee in so 

 many London restaurants. Some authorities on 

 dietetic matters recommend the use of coffee in pre- 

 ference to that of alcohol as a stimulus to the 

 brain ; others declare that the coffee-drinker is 

 exciting his heart to a dangerous degree. The 

 student, however, who desired to solve a difficult 

 problem in mathematics, or the poet who was in the 

 habit of "gaining a pious rapture," from an oc- 

 casional " cup of finely-tempered coffee," vould neither 

 of them go to the average vendor of the .Arabian 

 luxury in London in search of an adequate stimulant 

 for their intellectual toils. Every evil has its 

 accompanying consolation, and it is at all events 

 well to know that the warm water and chicory 

 solution tended to the average consumer of hot 

 diinks could not harm the nerves even of an infant. 

 The liot fluid might interfere undesirably with the 

 baby's digestion, of course, but its nerves would be 

 undisturbed by the coffee itself, and its slumbers 

 would not be in any way impaired. Nervous patients 

 who are recommended -'never to touch strong coffee" 

 had better take their Mocha regularly at a Metro- 

 politan coffee-palace. 



It would be a thousand pities if coffee were to go 

 out of use altogether as a favourite drink among all 

 classes. Yet there is more precariousuess about the 

 tenure of the beny than about that pertaining to 

 tlie leaf of the Bohea shrub. When it was first 

 introduced into England, coffee-drinking became all 

 the rage. Coffee and talk were the staples of the 

 tavern -keeper's trade, and snull-taking and tobacco- 

 smoking were additions to the eujoyments of these 

 places. Vary possibly the coffee-house when tirtt 

 started would not have sprung into such general and 

 instant favour but for the fact that it answered all 

 the purj'oses now subserved In* dubs and news]>a])ers. 

 'riiere the visitor was sure to meet his friends and 

 tiicn wonh knowing, and there, too, all the news 

 Of the day was heard, The coffee-house was the 

 Londoner's home, as Macaulay has said ; and 

 foreigners who wished to find a gentleman did not 

 ask were lie lived, but whether lie tre(jucnted tlic 

 " Grecian " or the " Kainbow." The Court and the 

 (ioverniiient looked on these establishments with 

 little favour ; they savoured too mu<li of pulilic 

 opinion turned into a ■fourth estate." At this period 

 a multitude of coffee-shops and coffee-houses were 

 established to meet the |)revailing fashion, which it 

 was fondly trusted would prove a permaiieut one. 

 toon, however, cluba sprang up, and the proprietors 



of coffee-taverns saw with disgust that coffee was a 

 passing fancy in the high world of fashion, and 

 that the ordi- -ry Urilisher preferred his strong 

 ale to any foreign concoction. There was a dan-- 

 gerons rival, too, in tea, which entered into use iir 

 Engj;-..,1 like the proverbial lamb, and has grown, 

 to moi'e than the dimensions of a lion. So the 

 coffee-house keepers found it to their interest to 

 cater for the more substantial needs of "cits" ; 

 and gradually they transformed themselves by 

 common consent into chop-houses, patronised by 

 the clerk and the apprentice during their midday 

 interval of repose. Of course the rise of tea into 

 popular respect has curtailed the sale of coffee ; 

 but it may well be qjestioned whether as a break- 

 fast drink, coffee is not medieinally superior to 

 its rival. If tea be taken in the morning, then 

 tea recurs again at eventide ; and doctors, although 

 they agree about hardly anything else, are almost 

 unanimous in asserting that two or three large 

 breakfast-cups of tea during the day is more than 

 is good for any constitution. The dire consequences 

 of tea-swilling are jieriodically trotted out for in- 

 spection— flatulence, gastric catarrh, dyspepsia, trem- 

 ours of the hands, and other physical mischiefs 

 are said to arise from it. Coffee-drinking in the 

 morning and tea-drinking at niglit do not seem 

 to produce such terrible results ; but it can hardly 

 be denied that coffee is less used than formerly 

 as a morning drink. It is more and more taking 

 its place as a modest after-dinner beverage, sipped 

 out of very small cups of dainty and delicate work- 

 manship, and so is developing into a liqueur. It 

 is thus that the Algerian Moor drinks it at this 

 day, without the unnecessary Anglican additions 

 of milk or sugar ; and he relishes the grounds as 

 the best part of the beverage. At present the 

 bodily effects of taking any hot drink whatsoever 

 are often pronounced to be hopelessly bad ; so 

 that soups would be prohibited as well as tea 

 and coffee. Yet as long as mankind shows its 

 existing liking for raising the internal temperature 

 of the physical frame artificially, coffee should 

 hold its own as being at least equally nourishing 

 and inspiring with tea, cocoa, chocolate, or any of 

 its numerous substitutes. And the only way in 

 which the sale of coffee can be much increased in 

 the Metropolis and elsewhere is for dealers in the 

 ready-made commodity to manage to combine 

 cheapness with au excellence of quality which is 

 now chiefly conspicuous by its absence. — Dailij Tele- 

 ijriipli. 



♦ 



I'LAlN'TIXCi IN NETHEKLANDS INDIA. 



(Tramlutcd for the " Straits Times.'') 

 Mr. Zylker. the liolder of a concession to work 

 petroleum springs in Langkat, has returned to 

 Batavia bringing word that the trial borings on tho 

 spot under direction of an official mining expert 

 have yielded enough petroleum to prove that thera 

 is abundance of that oil underground. 



The cultivation of I'eli tobacco has been so suc- 

 cessfully introduced in the Lampong districts in 

 ■Sumatra, that erelong a case containing sample-i 

 of the yield will be sent to I'eli to be fermented 

 and sorted there. 



Of local matters there is not much to say here. 

 Commercial, planting, and indcistrial enterprise it 

 still heavily depressed tliough quotations for sugar 

 give some reason for satisfaction. From .Surabaya 

 transactions in that article at 12 guilders per 

 picul were recently reported. Another remarkable 

 fact worth also drawing attention to is that, accord- 

 ing to statistics in one of our contemporaries, 

 po less than 22 Netherlands vessels are lying o» 



