A FEW FACTS ABOUT COFFEE. 



The average size of a coffee plantation, 

 in Java, is from four hundred to five hun- 

 dred acres. 



A coffee tree begins to bear about the 

 third year. At the fifth it reaches ma- 

 turity, and continues in its prime for ten 

 or fifteen years. In its wild state, the 

 tree is very tall, but under cultivation, it 

 is not allowed to grow above ten feet. 

 It is also made to assume a pyramidal 

 form — w T ith horizontal branches growing 

 quite to the ground. 



Its leaves are oblong, leathery, and 

 evergreen. Its flowers, small, clustered 

 in the axils of the leaf and snow white. 



The berries, in shape, resemble an acorn 

 with its cup taken off. In color, they are 

 reddish brown. They are harvested, or- 

 dinarily, at the beginning of the dry mon- 

 soon, about April or May. 



After being gathered the berries are 

 put in the pulping machine and the husk, 

 or outer covering, removed. The coffee 

 is now said to be in parchment; that is, 

 the two lobes of the bean are still cov- 

 ered by a parchment-like skin. In this 

 condition it is washed down in ferment- 

 ing banks, where it remains for thirty- 

 six hours. After a final washing it is 

 dried in the sun, in large woden trays, 

 running on wheels, or else on concrete 

 platforms. 



Most of the Java coffee is sent off to 

 Europe while it is still in the husk, in or- 

 der that it may present a better appear- 

 ance in the European markets. 



Coffee was not known to the Greeks 

 and Romans, but in Abyssinia and 

 Ethiopia, it has been used from time im- 

 memorial. 



Towards the end of the seventeenth 

 century it was carried from Mocha to 

 Batavia by Wieser, a burgomaster of 

 x\msterdam, where it was soon exten- 

 sively planted, and at last, young plants 

 were sent to the Botanical gardens at 

 Amsterdam. 



From this the Paris garden obtained a 

 tree, and in 1720 the first tree was planted 

 in Martinique, where it succeeded so 

 well, that in a few years all the West In- 

 dies could be supplied with young trees. 



The first coffee house was opened in 

 London in 1652, by a Greek, named Pas- 

 quet. This Greek was the servant of an 

 English merchant, named Edwards, who 

 brought some coffee with him from 

 Smyrna, and whose house, when the fact 

 became known, was so thronged with 

 friends and visitors who wished to taste 

 the new beverage, that, to relieve himself 

 from annoyance, Edwards established his 

 servant in a coffee house. 



In Arabia and the East coffee is not 

 prepared as a beverage in the same way 

 that it is in Europe. A decoction of the 

 unroasted seeds is there generally drunk, 

 and for the Sultan's coffee, the pericarp, 

 with the dried pulp, is employed. The 

 leaves of the coffee are used in the west- 

 ern part of Sumatra instead of the seeds. 



They are prepared by quick drying, in 

 a manner similar to that in which the 

 tea leaves are prepared. In this state 

 thev contain more caffeine than the bean. 



The average consumption of coffee in 

 the United States, according to Mulhall, 

 is two hundred and fifteen thousand tons. 



Louise Jamison. 



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