o4 MONTHLY. ><> 
XXL 
COLOMBO, DECEMBER 2nd, 190L 
No 6. 
COCOA AND CHOCOLATE. 
EAELY a century before Sir 
Walter Ealeigh astonished'the 
English people by bringing 
tobacco from America and 
teaching them how to smoke 
it, to the great scandal of the 
" unco' guid " of those days, 
Columbus had introduced cocoa 
into his native laud. How long the inhabitants of 
MeKico and Peru had been acquainted with iis 
nourishing properties we do not know ; but cer- 
tainly it was carefully cultivated and so much 
esteemed that the cocoa bean was an article of 
currency when the ypanish explorer first visited 
those shores. There is not the halo of tradition 
and sentiment which centers around that mo; • 
popular drink, tea ; mainly, perhap?, because 
while nearly all the traces of the aborigiiial 
South American have been swept away, China, the 
home of the tea plant, with all its ancient civilisa- 
tion, has endured. Now is it clear how the botanists 
who first named the genus to which the cocoa tree 
belongs fixed on the scientific term it bears. Any- 
how thiobivma means " food of the gods," and there 
are those who think that, considering wh.it valuable 
properties it possesses, the plant was not inaptly 
chiistened. A long time went by before it was in- 
trodu:cd into England, for the earliest intimation of 
it as an article of commerce is to be found in the 
Piihlic Adcertiscr of June. 1657, when it i6 notified 
that " in Bishopsgate-street, in Qaeen's Head-alley, 
dt a Frenchman's house, is an excellent West India 
drink called chocolate to be sold where you may 
hiive it ready at an; time, and also unmade at reasoii- 
abie rates." 
It is not a little curious that the introduction of 
tea and coffee dates almost from tjie same tiinei 
Just a year after we find in the mevcurius Politicus 
an advertisement of " that excellent and by all 
physicians approved China drink, calI'vJ by the 
Ghineans ' teha,' by other nations ' tay,' alias ' tee,' " 
wh'ch was to be had ■• the Sultaness Head Cjphee 
House in Sweefciug's-rents by the Eoyal Exchange." 
This notice would seem to show that as a drink 
coffee, as far as this country is concerned, has the 
palm of years, though now it has fallen on, com- 
paratively speaking, evil days. Chocolate, from the 
first, caught the taste of the town. It was the fashion- 
able temperance beverage — to use a modern phrase 
— perhaps because it was so dear — during the greater 
part of the Eighteenth Century, and the cocoa tree 
was a favourite sign and name for places of public 
refreshment. The writers of^that time frequently refer 
to it. Bat its price kept it beyond the reach of 
the bulk of the people, and when fashion changed 
its consumption fell. In Spain and Italy chocolate — 
which is a rather diff ji'ent thing from the cocoa aa 
we kniiw it— has always been very largely consumed. 
In England it early became the subject of taxation, 
and in the middle of last century a customs duty of 
sixpence had the effect of limiting the consuraptioa 
to some 440,000 lb. a year. With the new financial 
era the use of it began to revive, but it is only 
during the present generation than it has become at 
all popular. Of course, the Preachmau in Queen's 
Head-alley was wrong in calling it "a West India 
drink." Then it came almost wholly from South 
America. Now it is grown also in Dutch and British 
Guiana, in our Indian Empire, Ceylon, the Straits 
Settlements, West Africi, and the West lurlii Inlands, 
CO that the Erenchmiu after all only ai;tici; ated 
events. 
The Modern AiartcLU. 
Its popularity in recent times is usuailv accounted 
for by the fact that it has been largely recomaieuded 
by the medical profession. Unlike tea and coffee— 
