130 



POPULAE 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 w^hole shrub a 

 handsome pyramidal figure ; 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 



