69 



a produce of more than a pound and half or 

 two pounds cannot be expected from each plant ; 

 and even this is superior to the mean prod ice of 

 the West India islands. Rains at the time of 

 flowering, the want of water for artificial irriga- 

 tions, and a parasitic plant, a new species of 

 loranthus, which clings to the branches, are 

 extremely injurious to the coffee-trees. When, 

 in plantations of eighty or a hundred thousand 

 shrubs, we consider the immense quantity of 

 organic matter contained in the pulpy berry of 

 the coffee-tree, we may be astonished, that no 

 attempts have been made to extract a spirituous 

 liquor from them # . 



* The berries heaped together produce a vinous fermen- 

 tation, during- which a very pleasant alcoholic smell is emitted. 

 Placing at Caraccas the ripe fruit of the coffee-tree under 

 an inverted jar, quite filled with water, and exposed to the 

 rajs of the Sun, I remarked, that no extrication of gjas took 

 place in the first twenty-four hours. After thirty-six hours 

 the berries became brown, and yielded gas. A thermometer, 

 enclosed in the jar in contact with the fruit, kept at night 

 4° or 5° higher than the external air. In the space of 

 eighty-seven hours, sixty berries, under various jars, yielded 

 me from thirty-eight to forty cubic inches of a gas, which 

 underwent no sensible diminution with nitrous gas. Though 

 a great quantity of carbonic acid had been absorbed by the 

 water, as it was produced, I still found 0 78 in the forty 

 kiches. The remainder, or 0-22, was nitrogen. The carbonic 

 acid had not been formed by the absorption of the atmos- 

 pheric oxygen. That which is evolved from tke berries of 



