166 The Fermentation of Cacao 
increased cost of transport, and loss of valu- 
able time and labour in the drying house in 
‘cleaning ” the cacao. 
SEPARATION OF QUALITIES IN’ THE FIELD. 
In the economical working of an estate. it 
has not been found profitable to separate the 
one or two unripe pods and the small propor- 
tion of more or less ‘‘ brown” or ‘ black rot” 
pods from the general “sweating box”; yet 
one cannot but see that a ‘counsel of perfec- 
tion” would demand this sacrifice. There can 
be no doubt, however, as to the propriety of 
‘separating rat-eaten collections of seeds from 
the general bulk. 
Criollo or Pentagona types cannot be profit- - 
ably fermented together with coarser qualities, 
the former requiring only three to four days in 
the fermenting box, and the latter five to eight 
days: apart from this difficulty no one possess- 
ing any modicum of common sense would mix 
high-class cacao with an ordinary estate lot, 
thus reducing the value of the better seed by 
perhaps 50 per cent. Separation of these 
varieties should occur at planting time, or fail- 
ing this in the pod heaps before “‘ breaking.” 
MeasvurinG ‘‘ Wer” Cacao. 
-For three reasons it is necessary to ascertain 
the weight and volume of the cacao as it is 
placed in the “sweating” boxes, viz.: (1) To 
ascertain the annual yield from each particular 
