192 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



fail who attempt to make sugar. They cannot compete with tropical cli- 

 mates. They are all prosperous now with ordinary crops. Let them sell 

 them and buy sugar and coffee, and pay the war tax on them, and not try 

 to shirk that and be always looking- for a substitute for coffee. There is 

 Mr. Robinson continually recommending chicory, rye or some other sub- 

 stitute. 



Mr. Solon Robinson. — I do it upon principle; not to avoid the tax, not 

 because coffee is so high, but because I think some of the substitutes 

 recommended are more wholesome and more economical than coffee, and 

 their general use will enable people to pay their war taxes. 



The Chairman concurred in this opinion; he was not in favor of recommend- 

 ing any of the mixtures or concoctions advertised as substitutes for coffee; 

 but he does recommend the use of cereals, such as farmers can produce 

 and prepare without much cost. He said he had lately drank a preparation 

 of coffee made by mixing rye and coffee, half and half, and he doubted 

 whether any old coffee-drinker could have detected the adulteration. Good 

 coffee is now worth about sixty cents a pound, and he thought very few 

 farmers would feel as though they could afford to pay that price. 



Coffee Roasting. 



Mr. S. B. Ward exhibited one of Mills' coffee roasters, and stated that it 

 was the invention of a physician who, in his practice at the West, had dis- 

 covered the great want of such a culinary utensil. There, where the women 

 generally do their own work, and often live in houses of very limited 

 capacity, the coffee roasting is often neglected, and sometimes the costly 

 coffee berry is spoiled in roasting and rendered worse than valueless. Rye, 

 too, is very largely used, and is only fit for use when well prepared. He 

 found the smoke of roasting rye often very annoying to his patients. As 

 he was a Vermont Yankee, he at once set his mind to work to devise a 

 machine that would obviate these difficulties. It is composed of brass 

 clock work in an iron case, operated by springs, which give a rotary mo- 

 tion to a woven wire cylinder, about a foot long and four inches in diame- 

 ter. This will hold a quart of grain or coffee, and the cylinder is enclosed 

 by a tin cover, which prevents the aroma from escaping into the room, and 

 prepares the coffee far better than can be done by any ordinary process 

 within reach of the farmer's wife. The present cost of the machines, now 

 that all metals are at gold prices, is $6, $9, $12, according to size. The 

 examination of the machine elicited much attention, and the Chairman 

 stated that the opiniou appeared to be unanimous in its favor, not only as 

 a labor-saving machine, but one which would tend to reduce the consump- 

 tion of coffee, by enabling farmers' wives to prepare substitutes out of the 

 produce of the farm. Mr. Ward recommended growing the coffee bean as 

 the best known substitute for the coffee berry. He said the next best sub- 

 stitute was dried sweet corn. 



Mr. Williams recommended whenever farmers are disposed to use any 

 kind of grain that it sliould be ground, baked in bread, and that dried and 

 crumbled and then roasted. 



Mr. Ward said that rye was greatly improved by being previously par- 

 boiled. 



