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pulper and could not afford to buy one, and therefore had to dry the 

 coffee in the husk Coffee was a product which very quickly took up any 

 external odour, dirt or impurity. If it was to be cured in the double 

 husk, it should never be allowed to lie on the ground, as was very often 

 the case Frequently care was not even taken to sweep the place cleaa, 

 and the coffee consequently soaked up all the manifold impurities 

 of the soil, and was ruined. They must remember that the buyer 

 abroad not only inspected the coffee he bought and judged of its 

 aroma but actually ground, roasted, and tasted it. If the small 

 settler did not own a barbecue let him place his coffee upon a 

 clean board, but not on the bare ground, and let him take 

 care that nothing foul got mixed up with it. Besides the 

 "double husked" and "washed" coffee prepared with the pulper, 

 there was a third system by which some of the coffee was washed and 

 some was not. That was to say, the pulping was improperly done, 

 and the coffee was taken to the merchant with half of it washed and 

 half unwashed. Of course, the result was that the inferior article 

 lowered the value of the good article, and the unwashed destroyed 

 the value of the washed. 



To illustrate his remarks, Mr. DeMercado handed round three samples 

 of coffee, all from similar cultivations in the same district the only dif- 

 ferences being in curing. The first specimen was bad " double husk" 

 coffee, the second a better quality " double husk," and the third 

 "washed" coffee. The prices in the London market were 40s. per cwt. 

 for the first, 45s. for the second, and 60s. for the third. Proceeding 

 with his lecture, Mr. DeMercado pointed out that it was only by 

 properly pulping the coffee that the best price could be obtained. The 

 pulper was not very expensive to buy, and if there were only a little 

 co-operation there might be one among every group of small settlers. 

 All that was necessary was for a few men to make up their minds to 

 help themselves and help each other at the same time. Each man 

 could send his coffee to the common pulper, and realize a much better 

 price on his crop. In many districts of the Island to-day such small 

 central factories were run by merchants who bought the coffee in the 

 cherry and cured it themselves. He warned Jamaicans that unless 

 they produced better coffee they were likely to see still lower prices. 

 Brazil, their powerful rivel in the coffee market, used to turn out the 

 product by the primitive "double husk," method but in recent years the 

 cultivators in that country had seen the error of their ways, and had 

 taken to pulping- and washing, with the result that our unwashed coffee 

 was being to s certain extent neglected in the market. 



Mr. DeMercado showed a sample of Blue Mountain coffee to illus- 

 trate its superiority to the lowland product. He urged those of his 

 hearers who came from coffee districts to tell the small settlers to use 

 a little patience and not pick the unripe barries. The coffee having 

 been cured, he proceeded, they came to the point of packing it in the 

 bag to send to the shipper. Here there was room for great improve- 

 ment— and his remarks on this head applied to the shopkeeper as much 

 as to the grower. He had in his office a museum of foreign substances 

 found in bags of coffee sent to his firm. Among them were suoh things 

 as pumpkins, a p ur of baby's shoes, a chisel, a hammer-head, empty 



