246 
the ki E agency of Mr. James Irvine, of the firm of James Irvine & 
Co., of Liverpool The plants were distributed from Kew to tropical 
Bull,of King's Road, Chelsea, and James Irvine & Co., of Liverpool, 
had raised the plant from seed on a commercial scale, a had dis- 
A it to the various mee countries of the wo 
digenous i in Abyssinia, on the slopes above the Victoria Nyanza and in 
ia. It is cultivated in Arabia, and often occurs there spontaneously ; 
though whether it is Sm indigenous or an escape from cultivation is 
doubtful Liberian coffee has been found wild at Sierra Leone; in 
Liberia, and i in Ans It is, therefore, confined, as far as we know, 
to the West oast. The name Coffea liberica was given to the species 
ü Berion, it is much hoped, though scarcely to be expected, that the 
Liberian species may prove less liable to the attacks of the insect or 
fungus, or cither of them 
The cultivation of Liberian coffee did not, however, at first realise 
the expectations formed of it, It was said to exhibit no especial 
immunity from disease, The bean w be coarse 1 
EA and it found but little favour in the London market. The 
berr lso found difficult s clean by the planters. This i 
Bulletin for 1888, p. 262 — 
The “ chere of Liberian coffee do not become soft and pulpy 
when ripe, but remain hard and fibrous. Hence it has been found 
difficult to husk the beans, as the machinery found suitable for pre- 
paring Arabian coffee is not. botas to the Liberian coffee. Again 
the * parehment" skin in ihe latter is — and Woody, and the 
labour and per-centage of waste entailed in “cleaning” is increased, 
while the actual market ars is less. 
At the present moment the tide of opinion in the planting world has 
set somewhat in favour of Liberian coffee. 
Its cultivation has been prosecuted with considerable success in the 
Straits Settlements (see Kew Vetter il 1888, pp. 261-3; 1890, pp. 107, 
108). Beans cleaned on the spot have reali sed as muc ch as 7585.2 ewt. 
It is believed that the kae strong flavour of the new beans has 
