80 
COFFEE. 
in great winnowing-fans, in order to cleanse them ; 
and finally dried again. 
Such is the simple and easy method employed by 
the Arabs in the cultivation of this interesting tree, 
and in the gathering and preservation of its fruit. 
In the West Indies it is usual to arrange the 
coffee plants at the distance of about eight feet 
from each other, and to top them when they are 
six or seven feet high. The negroes employed in a 
coffee plantation prepare to pick the berries as soon 
as they assume a blackish colour ; and each negro, 
for this purpose, is provided with a canvass bag, 
having a hoop in the mouth of it to keep it open. 
This bag is hung about the neck of the picker, who 
empties it, as often as it is full, into a basket. The 
usual practice is to pick the trees at three different 
stages of their ripeness, and we are told that one 
hundred bushels in the pulp, fresh from the tree, 
will yield about a thousand weight of merchantable 
coffee. After the coffee is collected it is spread out 
in the sun to dry, in layers of about five inches 
deep ; and when this is accomplished, the husks are 
separated from the seeds, either by a grinding-mill, 
or with pestles in troughs, or large wooden mortars. 
Although this tree is a native of the warmer parts 
of Asia and of Africa, yet it is said to have succeeded 
in the temperate parts of Europe. In the botanic 
garden at Pisa M. Telli has raised a coffee-tree 
which has produced ripe fruit every year, and from 
which he has obtained more than twenty other 
