422 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION^ 1916. 



The primitive custom of using cacao for currency still prevails in 

 the State of Chiapas, especially in the city of Tuxtla and its vicinity. 



A common expression for cheap articles in tlie market here is that they 

 sell for so many a cinco. This originally meant 5 cacao beans; but to allow 

 for the fluctuating value of the cacao, a cinco actually consists of from 2 to 5 

 seeds, but the ratio of exchange will be uniform throughout the market. 



Mr. Collins found three distinct types of cacao at Tuxtla: Small 

 plump beans from Tabasco ; flatter beans that had been rolled in ashes 

 from Quechula ; and cacao pataxte, the seeds of Theohroma hicolor. 

 The latter parched and ground are used together with maize for 

 making a drink called " posol " (from pozolli, foaming). Another 

 drink called "tascalate" (from tezcalli, one who grinds maize or 

 some other substance on a stone metlatl) was composed of ground 

 cacao mixed with ground parched corn and almonds. It was carried 

 in the form of powder by travelers on long trips when there was little 

 opportunity of obtaining food, and made into an agreeable and 

 nourishing drink by the addition of sugar and water.^ 



BOTANICAL DESCRIPTION. 



Theohroma cacao is a small tree with a bare stem which generally 

 rises to a height of about 2 meters before branching and reaches a 

 height of 5 or 6 meters. Sometimes, however, under good condi- 

 tions of moisture, soil, and situation it grows higher. The tree is 

 cauliflorous; that is, the flowers spring forth from the trunk and 

 older branches. Leaves large, undivided, smooth, broad, pointed, 

 and of a thin texture, of a reddish color and hanging limp from the 

 branches when young, but soon turning green and becoming firm; 

 flowers produced from adventitious buds under the bark, usually at 

 the " eyes," or points marked by the scars of fallen leaves, small, 

 growing in clusters or solitary, usually only one of a cluster develop- 

 ing into fruit; calyx 5-parted, often of a pinkish color; petals 

 5, yellowish, concave at the base and having a straplike appendage 

 at the tip; stamens 10, united at the base into a cup, 5 without 

 anthers and the other 5 alternating with them bearing 2 double- 

 celled anthers each ; style threadlike, terminating in a 5-cleft stigma ; 

 fruit somewhat like a cucumber in shape, 15 to 25 cm. long, yellow 

 or reddish, longitudinally ribbed, the rind thick and warty, leathery 

 and tough, not splitting when ripe, 5-celled, and containing many 

 seeds in a soft butterlike pulp of a pleasant sweetish-acid flavor; 

 seeds compressed, somewhat almond shaped, with a thin, pale, 

 reddish brown, fragile skin or shell covering an oily, aromatic, bitter 



* The above information was derived from Mr. Collins's field notes. See his abridged 

 report : " Notes on Southern Mexico," by G. N. Collins and C. B. Doyle, of the U. S. 

 Department of Agriculture, In the National Geographic Magazine, March, 1911, pp. 

 301 to 320. 



