79 



100 dry nuts, therefore, lose in the process of dryincr of 



their free and combined alcaloids . . . . 16.01 



The drier the nuts, the greater the loss. 



This would be the actual loss on nuts dried locally, but other- 

 wise sound. What the loss may be after a week or two in the hold 

 of a ship — with the additional deterioration caused by mould, I 

 have no means of knowing. 



The number of dry nuts, viz : 33, on which the above calcula- 

 tion is l)ased is the number of nuts to one pound weight, after 3 

 week's drying — i.e a period that corresponds to the length of the 

 voyage from the African Coast to Europe. But the degree of des- 

 sication can go much further, for T have found that after a couple 

 of months as many as lOd halves ( = oO whole nuts) go to one 

 pound. 



On the other hand, reverting to the previous figures, 100 fresh 

 nuts would have to pay freight (57.30%) on 1238 grammes of 

 Avater— where 100 dry nuts would only pay (13.86%) on less than 

 200 grammes. In other words, one ton of fresh nuts would pay for 

 more than lialf a ton of water — whereas one ton of dry nuts would 

 only pay on about 3 hundredweight. Whether the gain in alcaloids, 

 in ship]nng fresh nuts, would not lie balanced by this surplus on 

 freight, is a question which, for the present, must remain open. 



Trade. 



Tlie uses to which the Cola nut is put in Europe and America 

 are many and varied. It enters in the composition of tonic wines 

 and liqueurs — of confectionery, of chewing gums, in certain well- 

 known therapeutic preparations : a use is found for it in dysentery, 

 combined with bismuth and salol as, " with this medicine a patient 

 " can go a considerable time without food and thereby the stomach 

 "obtains its needed rest." ("Chemist and Druggist," 20th Nov., 

 1915.) 



But the greatest use to wliicli the Cola nut is put is for mix- 

 ing with cocoa, a use for which it is especially well adapted, as, 

 owing to its small content of fatty matter (only 1.67% of the dry 

 nut), it forms a very suitable mixture with the powder of the cocoa 

 bean ; the latter containing an excess of fat, or cocoa-butter, which 

 has to be removed in the manufacture of pure cocoa. I presume 

 that it is to this capacity of being used as a part substitute for 

 Cocoa, and to the increased demand created thereby, that the present 

 favourable position of the Cola market is mostly due. 



But it is impossible to say how far war conditions have shared 

 in this advance, as the export figures (see below) do not carry us 

 beyond 1915, and. moreover, they do not discriminate between the 

 exports to Europe, and the Coastal exports to the neighbouring 

 French and Portuguese C^olonies, which, we know, are very im- 

 portant. 



P'reights must liave influenced the rise in prices, but, even 

 computing on a freiglit of two pence per pound, the margin between 

 pre-war prices (H^/ to 3^(1 per pound) and the actual price of 11 



