330 A YEAR OF COSTA RICAN NATURAL HISTORY 



short of dry it was finished in a steam drier, sent through 

 huUers, cleaned by machines, and finally sorted by a most 

 ingenious hollow cylinder with holes of varying sizes so 

 that from one machine dropped out three grades or sizes 

 of grains flat on one side, broken grains and Caracol or pea- 

 berry, which last is a grain round on both sides and consid- 

 ered the choicest. After all that, the coffee was hand-picked 

 by women and girls, who removed any grains that were 

 defective or twisted in shape, even if the size was right, for all 

 such things make the coffee inferior. 



The differences on which this sorting was based were very 

 slight — much slighter than those made use of by botanists 

 and zoologists to distinguish different species of plants and 

 animals — but the resulting "grades" fetched very different 

 prices in the receiving ports, London, San Francisco, New 

 York, or Hamburg. When we commented on these fine 

 distinctions, Mr. Clark told us of two instances known to 

 him of experts who were able to distinguish different sorts 

 of coffee and of tea by taste, this sense furnishing the final 

 test in such matters. When at a coflFee broker's in London 

 he selected samples of sixteen lots of coffee, all grown in 

 Costa Rica but in different parts of the country. A cup of 

 coffee was prepared from each one of the sixteen samples 

 and each cup given a number whose meaning was known 

 to Mr. Clark alone. The broker then tasted each cup and 

 said "this is Tres Rios coffee," "this is Cochenour's from 

 Juan Viiias" and so on, and fourteen out of his sixteen iden- 

 tifications were correct. A tea expert in San Francisco, 

 on a wager, identified two hundred and fifty different kinds 

 of tea by tasting the beverage. This is surely carrying the 

 development of the sense of taste to a high degree of dis- 

 crimination. 



When the sorting was completed and the coffee bagged 

 — each sack shipped from Costa Rica is required by law 



