366 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. 



downwards : these are furnished with evergreen, 

 opposite leaves, not unlike those of the bay-tree. 

 The blossoms are white, sitting on short foot-stalks, 

 and resembling the flower of the jasmine. The fruit 

 which succeeds is a "red berry, resembling a cherry, 

 and having a pale, insipid, and somewhat glutinous 

 pulp, inclosing two hard oval seeds, each about the 

 size of an ordinary pea. One side of the seed is 

 convex, while the other is flat, and has a little straight 

 furrow inscribed through its longest dimension ; while 

 growing, the flat sides of the seeds are towards each 

 other. These seeds are immediately covered by a 

 cartilaginous membrane which has received the name 

 of the parchment. 



Botanists have enumerated several varieties of this 

 tree as existing in the Eastern and Western Hemi- 

 spheres. These varieties result from accidents of 

 soil and climate, and must have been produced sub- 

 sequently to the naturalizing of the plant in America, 

 since it is pretty certainly shown, that all the coffee 

 trees cultivated there are the progeny of one plant, 

 which so recently as the year 1714 was presented by 

 the magistrates of Amsterdam to Louis XIV, King 

 of France. This plant was placed at Marly under 

 the care of the celebrated Mons. de Jussieu, and it 

 was not until some years after this that plants were 

 conveyed to Surinam, Cayenne, and Martinico. 

 The cultivation must have afterwards spread pretty 

 rapidly through the islands, since in the year 1732 the 

 production of coffee was considered to be of sufficient 

 consequence in Jamaica to call for an act of the legis- 

 lature in its favour. 



The use of coffee as an alimentary infusion was 

 known in Arabia, where the plant is supposed to 

 have been indigenous, long before the period just 

 mentioned. All authorities agree in ascribing its 

 introduction to Megalleddin, Mufti of Aden, in Arabia 



