FERMENTING METHODS IN THE GOLD COAST 147 



compare those obtained in a series of experiments 

 conducted at the Experiment Station, Peradeniya, 

 Ceylon (Wright, loc. cit.). 



Samples of different varieties were fermented for 

 definite periods of time and the weights of the fresh, 

 fermented, washed, and cured cocoa taken at the re- 

 spective stages. The following are the results obtained : 



Nearly the whole of the 14,000 tons of cocoa now being 

 annually exported from British West Africa is produced 

 by native cultivators. The Agricultural Departments 

 in these Colonies have been particularly energetic in 

 their efforts to educate the natives to the importance of 

 properly cultivating and fermenting this product. The 

 beans of the Forastero-Amelonado variety which they 

 cultivate, even when grown and cured under the most 

 satisfactory conditions, are of a decidedly inferior quality 

 as compared with those of the Criollo varieties produced 

 under similar conditions. There is ample evidence that 

 the native is beginning to appreciate the advantages 

 attaching to the fermentation of cocoa ; and if he has not 

 yet succeeded in producing a properly finished article, this 

 is not so much due to the apathy so commonly attri- 

 buted to him, as to his lack of knowledge of the proper 

 methods of cultivating and curing this product. 



His attempts at cocoa fermentation are often of the 

 crudest imaginable. In some instances the freshly 

 collected beans are merely heaped on mats in the corner 

 of a hut and covered up with banana leaves until the 

 fermentative processes have sufficiently decomposed 

 the pulpy envelope of the beans to enable it to be readily 

 washed away. 



