E Fruits of Cuba. 
prevent the confusion arising between this and the coco 
or cocoa, which is as different a fruit as possible. "The 
nut from which chocolate is made, is the cacáo, and not 
the coco ; and the tree which bears it, instead of, being 
one of the Palms, is classed among the Mallows, and is 
connected with the cotton shrub and tree, the linden, 
and other plants of that type. - 
The tree is of rather small size, with huge, long, oval 
pointed leaves, strongly ribbed, often assuming a dark 
purple color. "The flowers are small and star-shaped. 
The fruit is of a long oval form, pointed at the end, 
ribbed like | a muskmelon, and bearing some resemblance 
to a small I specimen of that fruit. When ripe, its rind 
is yellow. Cut it open, | and you come to a soft, white, 
spongy pulp, of a rather pleasant sub-acid taste, which 
separates whole from the rind. "The valuable seeds are 
wrapped up carefully in this pulp, in separate envelop- 
ments, in considerable numbers, and are of a lively red 
color before they are dried, when they turn to a duller 
hue, which is well known as chocolate color. A speci- 
men of the fruit which I opened contained thirty-eight 
of these seeds. 
A singularity with respect to this fruit, still more 
sided than in the case of the guanávana, is, that it 
grows out directly from: the bark of the large branches 
or trunk, hanging thereto by a short, fleshy stem. I 
have seen it clinging to a ‘stout trunk, within a foot or - 
two of the ground, without a twig or a leaf near it. 
_ It is unnecessary for me to say any thing of the value 
of the cacao. - When first discovered by Europeans, a. 
was greeted with boundless eulogy, of which its generic 
name, Theobroma, signifying food for the gods, is a 
