80 COCONUTS, KERNELS, AND CACAO. 



thereby tearing and injuring the cushion, from or near 

 which the successive crops of flower and fruit proceed, 

 hence the bearing capacity of the tree is subsequently 

 diminished. The correct method is to cut the pods 

 with a knife or cutlass, and only when fully ripe. The 

 pods should sound hollow when tapped with the 

 knuckles. 



The native often leaves his heap of collected pods for 

 two or three days without further attention, he then 

 breaks them open, and the medley of beans and pulp 

 are washed and dried in the sun. 



On a careful cacao estate, the beans are shaken out 

 of the pods or extracted with spoons usually by women 

 as soon as collected. Then they are piled in heaps and 

 covered by sand and banana leaves, or placed in box- 

 like bins with perforated sides and bottoms, and similarly 

 covered with leaves for fermentation. Every twenty-four 

 hours these bins are emptied into others, so that the 

 contents are thoroughly mixed, or, if in heaps, they are 

 turned over daily for four or five days, until the pulp 

 becomes darker, and the temperature raised to about 

 140 F. The object of this " sweating/' as the process 

 is called, is to remove the dark, sour, sticky liquid, a 

 kind of dilute acetic acid. The beans become duller in 

 colour and the skin is expanded. 



They are next laid out in trays or on mats to dry in 

 the sun, or are specially machine-dried. In Ceylon and 

 in West Africa, they are also washed or sprinkled over 

 with moisture and polished, the latter process being 

 done by machine in the more modern plantations, and 

 by natives treading upon the beans in more primitive 

 cacao estates. 



