130 POPULAR ECONOMIC BOTANY. 



beverage had been previously introduced in the year 1652, 

 when Mr. Edwards, a Turkey merchant, brought from that 

 country a Greek servant, named Pasqua, who understood 

 the method of preparing coffee, and first sold it in London 

 in a house which he kept for that purpose in George Yard, 

 Lombard Street." 



There are few shrubs more elegantly beautiful than the 

 Arabian Coffee. It rises from fifteen to twenty feet in height, 

 with slender branches covered with fine light-green, smooth, 

 shining, oblong-ovate and acuminate leaves ; the branches 

 are rather inclined downwards, giving the whole shrub a 

 handsome pyramidal figure j the leaves are oppositely placed 

 along the branches, and the flowers appear in the axils of 

 the leaves, either one or more in each axil; the flowers 

 are white, and not unlike those of the common jessamine ; 

 but the five segments of the tubular corolla are thinner and 

 longer. Usually not more than one berry is borne in each 

 axil, at the end of a very short peduncle, or stalk, so that 

 the berries, like the leaves, appear in pairs : at first they are 

 green, and rather smaller than a cherry; they acquire a 

 reddish-brown as they ripen, and each berry contains two 

 seeds, the enveloping pericarp being rather thick and fleshy, 

 and becoming entirely dry as they become perfectly ripe ; in 



