The Cultivation of Liberian Coffee. 289 
the group, and the species have added to them an indi- 
vidual odour which modifies, but which does not alto- 
gether efface the original perfume. This is so in the 
case of the coffee. The perfumes of the flowers of 
Coffea arabica and C. liber ica are almost identical, and 
they are much like the powerful and fragant odours given 
off from the flowers of Ixoras, Gardenias, and other 
rubiaceous plants. 
It is unnecessary here to enter into any exact botanical 
description of the flower and the other parts of the plant, 
for the obje6t in view is more of a practical than a scien- 
tific nature ; I may, however, point out that the berry of 
the Liberian greatly differs from that of the ' Creole' 
coffee. In the latter plant two coffee ' beans' invested 
by their double covering of ' silver-skin' and ' parch- 
ment' are enclosed in a reddish sweet-tasted soft pulp, 
in consistency not unlike that of the cherry of temperate 
climes. Hence, no doubt, one gets the common descrip- 
tion of coffee ' in cherry' as applied to the whole fruit 
but I would here protest against the perpetuation of a 
term which I regret to find is still used by those who 
ought to know better. My business agents in writing to 
a West Indian ' botanist' used the term ' berry,' and 
their correspondent, to my amusement, informed them in 
all gravity that they should call the coffee fruit " a cherry." 
Now a cherry is a kind of fruit known to botanists as a 
drupe, it is not a generic term like nut, and it is applied 
with accuracy only to the fruit of Cerasus Avium and C. 
vulgaris, and their cultivated varieties. Berry is the 
correct botanical description of the fruit of the coffee tree ; 
and, on the principle of calling things by their right 
names, I always speak, and like to hear, of coffee 
