Mr, George S. Hudson 181 
and daily “changing” of the cacao. Although 
I had followed this practice for over twenty 
years, yet I never grasped its full significance 
until 1 instituted a thorough examination of 
fermenting temperatures. In one or two in- 
stances, through carelessness or over-pressure 
of work, the sweating box attendant for a 
single morning omitted to “change ” the spare 
fermenting boxes with which I was experi- 
menting: in every such case there was a 
marked loss of temperature. Even when 
‘‘changing” had been conscientiously per- 
formed, plunging the thermometer, say twenty 
times, in different parts of a fermenting mass 
of cacao.on the third or fourth day, when high 
temperatures are commencing, would result in 
six or seven different readings, with perhaps 
as much as 5° F. difference between the maxi- 
mum and minimum; this demonstrates that 
fermentation does not take place as a uni- 
form, continuous process throughout a box, but 
rather as the result of numerous independent 
colonies of yeasts, all working towards the 
same object but with varying results. It was 
made amply clear to me that although the 
“breaking bulk” process known as ‘“ chang- 
ing” resulted primarily in a loss of tempera- 
ture, identically the same as occurs from the 
removal of the leaf cover, yet within a few 
hours the thorough mixing and diffusion of 
the fermenting yeasts results in the tempera- 
ture rising much higher than was the case 
