96 THE FARMER AT HOME. 



showers and rains ; and these again, gigantic rivers, periodical inun- 

 dations, and deltas. Thus all the conditions for extensive deposits of 

 wood, in estuaries, would arise from this high temperature ; and 

 every circumstance connected with the coal measures points to such 

 conditions. 



COFFEE. A seed, or berry, brought originally from Arabia 

 Felix, used for making a drink of the same nature. By coffee we 

 usually mean the drink itself, prepared from those berries. Its origin 

 is not well known ; some ascribe it to the prior of a monastery, who, 

 being informed by a goatherd that his cattle, sometimes browzing on 

 this tree, would wake and caper all night, became desirous of proving 

 its virtue ; accordingly he first tried it on his monks, to prevent their 

 sleeping at matins. Others refer the invention of coffee to the Per- 

 sians, from whom it was learned in the fifteenth century, by a mufti 

 of Aden, a city near the mouth of the Red Sea ; and who, having 

 tried its virtues himself, and found that it dissipated the fumes which 

 oppress the head, inspired joy, opened the bowels, and prevented sleep 

 without his being incommoded by it, recommended it first to his 

 dervises, with whom he used to spend the night in prayer. Their 

 example brought coffee into fashion at Aden ; there the professors of 

 the law, for study, artisans to work, travellers to walk in the night, 

 in short, almost every person drank coffee. Thence it passed to 

 Mecca, and from Arabia Felix to Cairo, and from Egypt to Syria and 

 Constantinople. Thevenot, the traveller, was the first who brought 

 it into France ; and a Greek servant, called Pasqua, brought it into 

 England in 1652, and setting up the profession of coffee-man, first 

 introduced the drink among the English ; though some say Dr. Har- 

 vey had used it before. 



COFFEE TREE. This tree is a native of Arabia ; and though 

 it thrives surprisingly in the Antilles, at Cayenne, and in the Isle of 

 Bourbon, also in Jamaica, it has preserved in its original country a 

 superiority that gives it a preference in all the markets of Europe. 

 The fruit, when stripped of its skin, is commonly small and round ; 

 it is of a green color, and has a strong scent. In rich and spongy 

 soils, a single tree has been known to yield from six to eight pounds 

 of coffee ; in different situations, a pound and a quarter from each 

 tree is great yielding. An acre of ground will yield from three to 

 seven hundred pounds of coffee. Some of our modern political econo- 

 mists affirm it may be raised in the southern portions of our own coun- 

 try ; but if, on trial, such should be the fact, it is doubted whether it 

 can ever here be made a profitable orop. 



COLD. When caloric combines with our bodies, or separates 

 from them, we experience, in the first case, the sensation of heat, in 

 the second, cold. When the hand is put upon a hot iron, part of the 

 caloric leaves the iron, and enters the hand ; this produces the sensa- 

 tion of heat. On the contrary, when the hand is put upon a lump of 



