4 
COFFEA ARABICA. ORD. X. Cymose. 183 
A TREE of low stature, seldom exceeding twelve feet in height, 
slender, at the upper part sending off long trailing branches: bark 
brown, and almost smooth. Leaves nearly elliptical, smooth, entire, 
pointed, waved, three or four inches in length, opposite, on short 
footstalks. Stipule in pairs, pointed. Flowers white, axillary, on 
short simple peduncles, or sessile, two or three together. Calyx 
very small, tubular, five-toothed, Corolla monopetalous, funnel- 
shaped, cut at the limb into five reflexed ov al or lanceolate seg- 
ments; tube long, narrow, almost cylindrical. Filaments five, 
tapering, inserted at the mouth of the tube: antherz linear, incum- 
bent, of the length of the filaments. Germen roundish. Style 
simple, longer than the stamina. Stigma cloven, reflexed. Fruit 
a round fleshy red berry, containing two seeds, invested by a car- 
tilaginous arillus: the appearance of the seed is well known. 
The Coffee tree is a native of Arabia Felix and Ethiopia, and 
was first noticed by Rauwolfius in 1573; but Alpinus, in 1591, was 
the first who described it. It was cultivated in Britain by Bishop 
‘Compton in 1696,* and. is now to be found in many of the well 
stored hot-honses of this country. For the specimen of it here 
figured we are obliged to Dr. Lettsom, who possesses the best plant 
of this species which we have seen, and which was highly valved by 
its late owner Dr. John Fothergill. 
The use of Coffee, or the seed of the fruit of this tree, appears 
to have originated in Ethiopia, but the practice of drinking it in 
Arabia was introduced from Persia by the Mufti of Aden in the 
fifteenth century. In 1554 its use first began at Constantinople. 
From whence it was gradually adopted in the western parts of 
-Europe. At Marseilles it was begun in 1644, At Paris, if we 
except the family of Mons. Thevenot,’ it was unknown till the 
arrival of the Turkish Ambassador, Soliman Aga, in 1669; and in 
1672 the first coffee-house was established in Paris by an Armenian, 
named Pascal, but he met with little encouragement, and therefore 
* Vide Douglas. History of the Coffce tree. p. 21. 
* This gentleman had resided some.time in the East, and returned to Paris in 1657. 
