VAEIETIES OP PLANT INFLUENCE OP CULTIVATION. 11 



beans cease to adhere to each other, but it should not 

 be exposed to sun and wind until the pellicle known 

 as the parchment cracks, unless it is purposed at once 

 to peel and pack it, as every hour's exposure to the 

 atmosphere after that is removed takes away both 

 from the colour and the aroma of the bean. For the 

 same reason casks or cases are preferable to sacks for 

 its conveyance to the market, and it cannot be too 

 strongly impressed on the planter that coffee has a 

 strong attraction for damp and for all scents, and will 

 become thoroughly impregnated with any substance 

 with which it is brought in contact. Pepper, ginger, 

 salt fish, spirits of all kinds, and cocoa-nut oil, all im- 

 part their flavour and scent to coffee, and will spoil it 

 if amongst the same cargo. In what has been said 

 above, it is of course supposed that the coffee is picked 

 when fully ripe, and not, as is frequently the case with 

 native planters, that the trees are stripped directly a 

 few berries are ripe on them, for no care in curing or 

 packing will impart colour or flavour to a half-ripe 

 bean. In order to obviate as much as possible the 

 risk of loss of colour and aroma in the conveyance to 

 Europe, it has been proposed to send the coffee home 

 in the parchment skin, in the same state in which it is 

 brought from the various estates to the shipping port 

 to be cleaned and shipped, but although the actual 

 weight of the parchment or refuse is only one-fifth of 

 the whole, yet the greater expense of labour in this 

 country has proved an insurmountable obstacle. As 

 the expense of cleaning and shipping is 5 per ton 

 on the coast, and all mechanical operations are per- 

 formed with greater facility in this country, this objec- 



