120 TROPICAL AGRICULTURE CHAP. 



to gather the pods out of the reach of the knife. The stalk 

 of the pods can be cut by these hooks with either a thrusting 

 motion or a pulling jerk. Some of them have a chisel at the 

 end, and all the hooks are sharpened on the concavity like a 

 sickle. 



Breaking the The pods having been gathered, they are placed in heaps 

 under the trees and they may be broken at once or left for 

 a day. The seeds or beans or nibs they are called by either 

 of these three names are then taken out of the pods, which 

 are either opened with a cutlass or broken by knocking them 



Drawing the against each other or on a stone. The seeds may be dra^vn 

 with the fingers, or by means of a wooden spoon, and at the 

 same time the white fibrous tissue is taken away. This 

 stringy stuff and the broken pods should be put in heaps to 



Shells used ro t for manure, or be spread over the roots of the trees, or, 

 better still, be buried between the trees, and in this way 

 something will be given back to the soil. 



FERMENTING. The beans are now carried away to the 



cacao house for the purpose of being made to undergo a 



sweating or fermentation process. This is a very important 



Importance matter for the planter, inasmuch as on its proper perfor- 



of proper fer- *. , . 



mentation, mance depends, to a great extent, the value of his produce. 

 In some places the cacao beans are simply dried as soon as 

 they are taken out of the pods, and the cacao thus prepared 

 is sold or shipped to the markets. But it is very inferior 

 stuff with a bitter, unpleasant taste, and it fetches the 

 lowest prices, and gives a bad name to the bulk of the cacao 

 shipped by the colony, thereby doing harm to the planters 

 generally. 



How to Sweating is simple and inexpensive. It may be done in 



ferment the v , , . ... ,-,-,, 



beans. boxes or barrels or in an air-tight room. The cacao is put 



into a receptacle, it is covered with plantain leaves, boards 

 are put on the top and it is left to ferment for about three 

 days, when it is removed to another receptacle and closed up 

 again and allowed to sweat for three days longer. The ob- 



