69 



neral, however, 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 produce of the West India Islands. Rains 

 at the time of flowering, the want of water for 

 artificial irrigations, 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 as- 

 tonished, 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 

 rays of the Sun, I remarked, that no extrication of gas 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 9 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 

 inches, The remainder, or C'22, was nitrogen. The carbonic 

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

 pheric oxygen. That which is evolved from the berries of 



