786 
THE TROPICAL AQRIOULTURIST 
[May I, 1891. 
COCOA AND ITS CULTIVATION, AND THE 
PEEPAEATION OF CHOCOLATE. 
The cocoa tree is very common in the warm regions 
of America, but since the conquest it has heen 
cultivated in Mexico, in Guatemela, and Nicaragua. 
Under the kingship of Montezuma, the Spaniards 
transported this tree to the Canaries, to the littoral 
of Venezuela, to the Antilles. The cocoa tree re- 
quires a rich soil, deep and damp. Nothing suits 
it better than a grubbed-up forest. All the plantations 
are similar ; shady localities, at a short distance 
from the sea or on the banks of rivers. When a 
piece of land is selected as fit for the cultivation, 
a commencement is made by assuring a system of 
shade. If it is to be cubbed up, the trees which have 
been stripped are left standing, or else there are 
planted some shrubs of rapid growth, such, for in- 
stance, as the Erythrina umhrosa (bonana tree.) To 
the South of the Equator, in the province of 
Guayaquil, the planting is done directly by seeds, 
while in Venezuela they are planted out as seed- 
lings, in the latter case every precaution being taken 
to protect the young plant against the sun’s rays. 
The seeds germinate in eight or ten days ; in the 
second year the cocoa tree reaches a height of about 
a yard, and it is then that it is topped. The tree 
generally flowers at the age of about thirty months, 
when climatic conditions are favourable. There are 
few plants, the flowers of which are so small, and 
especially so disproportionate to the size of the 
fruit. The flowers do not appear separately, but in 
bouquets, on the same stem, at all elevations, on the 
mother branches, and even on the ligneous roots 
running along the surface of the soil. A gentleman, 
who has lately studied the question, in his researches 
on the constitution of the cocoa berry and on the 
composition of chocolate, gives some interesting 
particulars as to the distances which separate the 
trees and the care brought to bear on their cul- 
tivation. From the fall of the flowers to maturity 
nearly four months elapses. The fruit, or cabosse, 
is divided into five lobes; its weight varies from 
300 to 500 grammes. The seeds which are taken 
from the fruit are exposed to the heat of the sun ; 
during the night they are raked into a heap under 
a shed. An active fermentation soon set in, which 
would be hru'tful were it allowed to increase. From 
100 kilogrammes of fresh seeds our authority has 
seen 45 to 50 kilogrammes of dry and vendable 
cocoa extracted on a hacienda in Aragua. A cocoa 
tree which has attained the age of seven to eight 
years annually furnishes an average of o kilo. 72. 
At Gigante, in Upper Magdalena, the yield is about 
2 kilos. The cocoa is decorticated by the ap- 
plication of moderate heat ; the shell having become 
weak, it is then removed by the winnowing. In 
torrefication the berry acquires, like that of coffee, an 
odour, due to a low proprotion of a volatil^rinciple. 
This is the aroma perceived in chocolate. The cocoa 
berries are rich in nutritive principles. Independently 
of a strong dose of fatty matter, they also contain 
azoted substances, similar to albumen and caseine, 
theobromine and compounds of ternary composition, 
these elements necessarily varying in quantity according 
to the place of growth. Numerous analyses have 
been made at the Conservatoire of Arts and Sciences. 
The following is the result of an examination of 
cocoa, coming from Trindad: — Butter, starch, theo- 
bromine, asparagine, albumen, gum giving mucic acid- 
tartaric acid free and combined, soluble cellulose, 
and matters of an indeterminate nature. As is well 
known, decorticated cocoa slightly roasted, and 
separated from the seeds, is the basis of chocolate. 
In the products of French factories, there have 
been found in chocolate from 55 to 59 per 
cent of sugar; in Spanish products, 40 to 53 
per cent. In chocolates honestly prepared only 
cocoa and sugar should bo present, too lai^e a 
quantity of the latter weakening tlie quality. Thus, 
the gentleman from whom quotations have already 
been given, when about to start on a long journey 
in limcrica, procured a prcparivtiou o£ 80 parts of 
cocoa and 20 parts of sugar 
, a composition repre- 
sented by: — 
Sugar- 
Parts. 
. . 20 
Butter 
. . 10 
Albumen 
. . 41 
Phosphates 
3 
Other matters . . 
. . 26 
100 
This was a useful addition to the ration which 
consisted of meat dried in 
the air (tassajo), maize 
biscuits, or cassava cakes. 
The Mexicans made a 
paste with cocoa which they called chocolate, in 
which they mixed a little maize. Up to the sixteenth 
century travellers differed widely in their opinions 
as to chocolate. Acosta considered from a prejudiced 
point of view. On the other hand, Cortes probably 
exaggerated the value when he pretended that by drink- 
ing a cup one could march throughout the whole 
day without taking any other nourishment. In France, 
the new drink had its partisans and its detractors. 
Madame de S6vign6, in a letter to her daughter said 
“I have wished to reconcile myself with chocolate; 
I take it in the afternoon to digest my dinner, with 
a view to supping well, and I take it to nourish 
myself, and in order to fast till the evening; it 
has brought about the effects I wished; that is 
why I find it pleasant; it acts according to the 
intention.” 
Chocolate in its small volume contains a large 
portion of alimentary matters. Humboldt says that 
it has been truly remarked that in Africa rice, gum, 
and shea butter aid men traversing the desert ; and 
in the New World, he adds, chocolate and maize 
flour render accessible to him the plateaux of the 
Andes and the vast forest. By the addition of albumen, 
fat, of the congeners of sugars, and the presence of 
phosphates, cocoa recalls the composition of milk, 
the type according to Front, of every nutritive 
regimen. Having arrived at a certain stage of 
civilisation, man frequently adopted into his food 
plants which acted on his organism in the manner 
of fermented drinks. Like wine taken in proper 
quantities, these aliments favoured digestion, im- 
proved the memory, exalted the imagination, and 
developed a feeling of well-being without giving place 
to a hurtful reaction so often the case in the- abuse 
of alcoholic drinks. 
It is a curious fact that human races, separated by 
the greatest distances and never having had any 
communication the one with the other, prepare, with 
certain vegetables, exciting drinks, such, for instance, 
as tea in China, coffee in Arabia, cocoa in Peru, mate 
in Paraguay, cocoa in Mexico, utilising either the 
leaves or the seeds of plant of which the seeds of 
plants of the botanical species have no analogy, but 
which, despite this difference of natural source, 
exercise a similar action on the nervous system 
and on digestion. The reason is that there are in 
these different plants substances possessing the con- 
stitution of alkaloids, and endowed with similar pro- 
perties; that is, cafeine in the leaves of tea plant, 
of mate and in coffee, cocaine in the leaves of 
coca; and theobromine in the berries of the cocoa 
tree. Thus the Chinaman, the Arab, the Peruvian, 
the Paraguayan Indian, the Inca, and the Atzec 
were under the influence of a similar agent when 
they had taken their habitual drink. — IrManGroecr. 
[This is the first time we have heard of the “ The 
Indian Grocer ” ? — Bn. T. A.] 
^ 
Coffee in Bbazil. — The following communica- 
tion, addressed to the Jornal do Commercio of 
this city, was published in that paper on the 6th 
instant: — “ I have seen in the Jornal do Commercio 
an item taken from the Rio Noveme. of Eio Novo, 
in regard to the cofiee crop of that municipal 
district. From the observations I have made of 
the heavy flowering in the north of S. PaUlo, I 
can assure you that the trees will not produce 
more than half the crop that flowering seems to 
promise,” — Rio News, Feb. 10th, 
