COFFEE ANALYSES AND MANURES. 209 
to Colombo and is there used as a non-conducting sub- 
stance for packing ice, but more generally as fuel for 
the furnaces of the steam machinery in the ape 
establishments. Unless in the shape of ashes adde 
to composts this parchment skin never finds its way 
back to the estate. Its importance in quantity may 
_ be estimated from the fact, that, with all the drying 
that can be given on estates, the proportion parch- 
ment skin to clean coffee sent down by railway is, 
in bulk, so large that it takes five bushels of parch- 
ment coffee to give 1 cwt of clean bean. Better 
resuits are occasionally obtained, 4? bushcls or even 
44 yielding 1 cwt; but the average is as stated ; 60 
bushels parchment coffee brought down by railway 
are equivalent te 12 cwt. of clean beans. The parch- 
ment skin, when divested of water, is a light sub- 
stance when compared with coffee, and we have 
not the exact figures for its weight as compared 
with the bean it encircles, but our strong recollec- 
tion is that 60 bushels of partially parchment coffee 
go to a ton on the railway. If so the parchment 
skin in every ton as it reaches the Colombo stores 
is § cwt. to 12 cwt. of beans, or 2-5ths of the whole. 
If, therefore, we were able (we wish we were) to 
export 1,200,000 cwts of clean coffee, that would 
mean the removal! from the estates of 2,000,000 cwts 
of matter, in the shape of beans and parchment in- 
cluding moisture. We wish Mr. Hughes had given 
us the analysis of the parchment skin separately, as 
he has done in the case of the pulp. Besides most 
of the moisture being in the parchment skin it seems 
obvious from its appearance (it is called ‘‘chaff” at 
the curing mills) that it is largely siliceous in com- 
position and does not, therefore, weight for weight, 
deprive the soil of anything like the quantity of 
valuable minera!-matter that the beans do. What 
Mr. Hughes’ analysis enables us to institute is a 
comparison between the constituents of 100 parts cf 
parchment skin and bean combined (‘‘ parchment 
coffee”) and those of 100 parts of clean beans. To 
enable us to institute this comparison, let us first 
quete the result of analysis of the ash of planta- 
tion Ceylon coffee beans (not by Mr. Hughes). The 
figures are :— 
Potash = abet 
Lime ; 4°} 
Magnesia . 8°9 
Oxide of iron 0°45 
Sulphuric acid Bier 
Phosphoric acid ... . 10°3 
Chlorine Pe 
Carbonic acid EES 
