PREPAEATION OF COFFEE FOE MARKET. 



15 



fall tliroiigli these holes and are assorted by them into large and 

 small, flat and round grains, which pass into different bins, ?i, o, p. 

 There still remains a portion of the fine inner covering of the 

 grains, which is removed in the box §', with constant shaking, 

 trituration, and fanning. Falling into the bin r, the cleaned cof- 

 fee is removed and carefully picked over by hand before it is 

 finally consigned to the 



The picking is 

 generally done by wo- 

 men, and in the manner 

 depicted in the illustra- 

 tion." 



In countries where 

 the most primitive meth- 

 ods are still in vogue, 

 the coffee is very imper- 

 fectly cleaned, and the 

 fine inner covering ad- 

 heres more or less to the 

 bean, largely reducing 

 its commercial value. 



"While in Java I for 

 the first time found a 

 seemingly plausible 

 method of accounting 

 for what is termed in 

 commerce the " male berry " coffee. This, as is well known by all 

 dealers in the article, is a bean of a roundish, oval shape, and its 

 merits have been highly extolled by some who claim that it is 

 much better than the ordinarily shaped coffee. Mr. J. "W. E. de 

 Sturler, the owner of a large coffee plantation in the Preanger dis- 

 trict, assured me that his observations had led him to believe that 

 the so-called male berries are simply those berries which do not 

 develop and attain the full size of the average bean ; in short, 

 that they are imperfect ben-ies ; that, while all the trees bear 

 more or less of them, the older plants, which are less thrifty and 

 vigorous, bear by far the larger percentage, and that, perhaps, a 

 fair estimate of the average quantity of this style produced by his 



Picking over CofEee, 



