CHAPTER II. 

 BY DR. OSCAR LOEW. 



With some Comparative Notes on the 

 Fermentation of 7^ea and Coffee. 



ALTHOUGH much has been written about 

 the fermentation of cacao, there stills exists a 

 great difference of opinion in regard to the 

 process, its purpose and necessity, and the 

 kind of action involved in it. 



Herbert Wright, in his exhaustive work on 

 cacao, 1 mentions yeast cells 2 as the most impor- 

 tant organisms causing the fermentation, while 

 other authors attribute it to unorganized fer- 

 ments, others again to bacteria, and even the 

 changes due to germination were supposed to 

 play a role in it. 



According to Sir George Watt, in his Dic- 

 tionary of the Economic Products of India 3 : 



1 " Theobroma Cacao or Cocoa." Colombo, 1907, 

 p. 108. 



2 According to Dr. Axel Preyer (Tropenpflanzer, 5 

 (1901), pp. 157-173), a special kind of yeast, which he 

 named Saccharomyces tkeobroma, effects the best fermen- 

 tation in Ceylon. See Dr. Preyer's essay, p. 20 and 

 elsewhere, also Dr. Nicholls's, p. 225, et seq. 



* London, 1893, vol. vi, pt. 4, p. 44. 



