912 THE TROWCAL AGRICULTURIST. [June i, 1892. 
If you have a troublesome corn the doctor can 
be again put to good account by rubbing him on 
the toe after you have taken a hot bath, and cut 
away as muoli as possible of the troubleson\e intruder. 
Besides all this the doctor is always ready to 
sacrifice himself in the cause of Russian tea — slice 
him in without sugar — or in the preparation of old- 
fashioned lemonade, than which no drink is more 
wholesome. 
Altogether Dr. Lemon is an individual few people 
can afford to get along without. — Exchange. 
♦ 
PLANTING IN THE NEW HEBRIDES. 
From a letter dated to a gentleman in ColomVo, 
we quote as follows . — 
" Santo, New Hebrides, fVb. lOtb, 1892. 
"Just a line to let you know that we are applying- 
to Japan for coolies, and as far as we can see at 
present, any number can be had for the coat of trans- 
port and about sixpence per diem for their work. 
" It may not have struck you that in these is'auis 
a man has advantages thul cannot be formed else- 
where. 
" No restrictions witli regard to imported labour 
which he can get from China, Jspau, Malay or any- 
where at bis own price and on bis own terms. 
" If a few planters came out we could send our own 
chartered vessels and bring »8 many labourers as 
we requ/re, and as to the question of titles to the 
land, that would be perfectly secure as ne could get 
the islands annexed without trouble if fe tiers were 
here, and you have time to make a fortune or lay the 
foundation of one before there aro too many laws or 
restrictions. Sugar planters could Fond thi labour vesse's 
up to Japan and load up tbousamls and there is no- 
thing to prevent going to work nt cnce. This end of 
Santo, Male and MallicoUa has good low land for 
sugar and the natives as you trj aware are anxious 
to sell for what they can get. 
" We have been pushing the aathoritios for annex- 
atioD, and uo doubt shall get it in time, but it is 
questionable whether we fhould not be acting more to 
our advantage if we sent a vessel up to Japan for 
200 coolies. 
" We are getting islanders now by the mail steamer 
under the same laws that enable the mission stations 
to obtain native cooks and teachers from o'her isla nds. 
" We pay their passages by steamer and the expense 
is less than in any part cf the world, £3 ptr heed 
and no restriotious. I think we can xet ihem from 
Japan under £5 per head. What more do the planters 
want ? There is no drought here to burn up the cane 
fields, »nd no heavy timber to clear. 
" Price of land about one penny per acre cash or 
100 acres for a musket and you would nevfr be 
troubled by seeing a native unless you ei courage them 
and come to trade or work." 
COCOA. 
By Joseph Hatton. 
{Illustrated hy JV. H. Margetson.) 
" Cocoa-leaf, coco-nut, cocoa," reuiarks a technica 
authority, " it requires thought before one can rightly 
attribute the properties and uses of these vegetable 
products." Many persons think cocoa-nibs are made 
from a root, others associate them with the coco- 
nut palm. I could hardly realize the existence of 
BO much ignorance or indifference about one of the 
most familiar of popular beverages and confections 
until I opened an established dictionary and found 
an engraving of the coco-nut palm illustrating the I 
word " cocoa." The great Encyclopedias do not 
however leave one in doubt. Cocoa is the product 
of the seeds of the ThcoJirorna (Food of the Gods) 
cacao. Tlie tree flourishes in Mexico, Brazil, the 
West India Islands, Columbia, Equador. The finest 
fjualities aro grown in the island of Triiiidad, and 
in Venezuela, ('aracas has given its iianio to a 
popular brand. Of late years, Ceylon also has produced 
a fjcan of high character. A drawing made in a 
leafy corner of that sunny island supplies us with 
our initial illustration. The Thcohroma caccui, better 
known as the cocoa tree, rises with a bare stem to 
the height of six or seven feet, and then dividing 
into many branches climbs upwards some ten or 
fifteen feet higher. Tlie branches spread out not un- 
like an oak, but witli a dark green leaf something 
of the shape and character of a plum tree. The 
fruit is a large pod that hangs pendulous from the 
tree by a tough timber stalk. Its surface is grained 
and hard. At first the pods are green, but as they 
ripen they become yellow, the side next the sun red. 
The tree attains its full vigour in seven or eight 
years, and yields two principal crops in the year. 
There is not what may he called a harvest time, 
not in the sense of our cutting of corn or the vin- 
tage in France. The pods do not ripen all at the 
same time. One or two from a tree are cut as 
they appear to the eye of the expert as ready for 
stripping. These are gathered together in heaps, and 
by and by the'plantation hands, men and women, burst 
open the pods, strip away the rind and extract the 
nuts, each pod containing a hundred or more packed 
in the closest compass. The nuts are then laid out 
upon mats to dry, after which they are packed for 
exportation in bags, each of which holds about 
112 lb. 
Recently, in company with a friend, I saw vast 
quantities of the luscious-looking bean turned out 
of its Oriental packing in "the cocoa metropolis " 
of the West of England, and watched its gradual 
conversion into that particular " food of the gods " 
which has become universal among men. Bags from 
Trinidad, Venezuela-, Ceylon and other cocoa regions 
were being swung through tlie air into the storage 
and grinding room of Fry's factories at Bristol. 
Pausing in one of the galleries that unite the dif- 
ferent factories to watch the busy scene below us, 
we find ourselves on a level with the vane of St. 
Bartholomew's Church steeple. The sacred edifice is 
literally embedded in the secular buildings that 
have grown up all round it. The children pouring 
out of the church-schools might be part of the 
working-folk of the factory going to dinner. They all 
look free and happy and well nurtured, the working 
children as well as^^the scholars with their books and 
slates. St. Bartholomew's is one of those out-of-the- 
way churches which you often find in old cities lost 
in the noisy thoroughfares of growing industries, their 
congregations dispersed among other houses of prayer. 
A new site will evidently have to be found for St. 
Bartholomew's. From the first it would seem as if 
trade and comu.otce had been struggling at Bristol 
for supremacy with ecolesiasticism. In the fifteenth 
century it was "a city of towers," eighty monasteries 
and churches crowning its embrasured walls. Prior 
to the edicts of Henry VIII., it was indeed more or 
less an ecclesiastical city, crowded with devotional 
guilds, hospitals, hermitages, churches, chantries, 
the population picturesque with the typical costumes 
of Franciscan, Benedictine, Carmelite and Domi- 
nican monks, priests, and friars, the air (says one 
historian.) " thick with clouds of incense." 
If the possible conversion of the site of 
St. Bartholomew's into business purposes should 
strike a note of regret in some minds we would 
hasten to offer the compensating fact of the annex- 
ation of the county gaol for the firm's stables and 
timber stores. Indeed the exigencies of cocoa manu- 
facture seems to have compelled a general making 
free with the western city. Fry's brassplate meets 
the eye in the various business quarters of the city, 
setting up fresh landmarks for old ones, and filling 
the air with a perfume at some points hardly less 
noticeable than was the incense of Bristol's olden days. 
We had paused at the open door of the roasting 
room, not only to witness the unloading of tropical 
cargoes but to take a glance over the red-tiled roofs 
and gabled houses of Bristol away to St. Paul's in 
Portland Square, busy streets right and left and at 
all points, suggestions of the historic character of 
the famous old city and its merchant venturers, its 
battles for king and parliament, its royal and civil 
banquetings, its reform riots, its literary coteries, 
and its varied enterprises maritime and otherwise. 
