Mr. George S. Hudson 165 



for the brokers to attribute this flatness to 

 unripeness, yet I am convinced they are almost 

 entirely wrong in their diagnosis. Many ex- 

 aminations of the heaps of cacao pods in the 

 fields have convinced me that these, as a rule, 

 on a well-conducted estate, do not contain 

 more than i to 2 per cent, of unripe cacao, and 

 further it can be ascertained that this extreme 

 flatness and solid fracture is a characteristic of 

 the lowest type of Calabacillo cacao, and is not 

 to be found associated even with the unripe 

 beans of higher types. It will therefore only 

 be just for cacao brokers, buyers and manufac- 

 turers to absolve the planter from this particular 

 sin of picking unripe cacao for although it is 

 impossible to always avoid picking an unripe 

 pod, yet even the most ignorant peasant knows 

 that such a practice is undesirable and in 

 future to attribute this undesirable quality to 

 the fact of the beans having been picked from 

 a Calabacillo type of tree. 



REMOVAL OF THE PLACENTA IN THE FIELD. 



I would emphasize the desirability of making 

 the cacao carriers or basket fillers free the seed 

 entirely from the " fibrous heart " or " placenta," 

 a proportion of which is too often carried in 

 with the cacao. Where a rotary or vacuum 

 dryer is in use this becomes almost essential 

 to economical work, and a little drastic super- 

 vision and fines at the outset soon accomplish 

 this object. Failure to observe this involves 



