——— as 
and shining-green on their upper surface; its 
stem rises from among the leaves, and is round, 
branching at the top, and about two feet high; 
its flowers grow in a kind of umbels at the ends 
of the branches, have a purplish colour, and ap- 
pear in July and August; and its seeds are ob- 
long and crowned with down.—Klein’s species, 
Cacalia Kleinia, grows naturally in the Canary 
Islands, and was introduced to Britain in 1732. 
Its stem is thick, fleshy, jointed, swollen in the 
middle of the spaces between the joints, irregu- 
larly but profusely ramified, and usually from 
three to nine feet high; its branches have the 
same jointed and bearded appearance as the 
stem; its leaves grow irregularly all round the 
extreme part of the branches, and are glaucous 
in colour, and long, narrow, spear-shaped in form, 
—and when they fall off, they leave scars which 
always remain on the branches ; and its flowers 
grow in large clusters at the extremity of the 
branches, and are tubulous and of a faint carna- 
tion-colour, and bloom in September and Octo- 
ber. “This plant,” says Miller, “has been called 
cabbage-tree by the gardeners, from the resem- 
blance of its stalks to those of the cabbage; 
by others, carnation-tree, from the shape of the 
leaves and colour of the flowers. There have 
been stones and fossils dug up at a great depth 
in some parts of England, which have very per- 
fect impressions of this plant upon them; from 
whence Dr. Woodward has supposed the plants 
were lodged there at the universal deluge; and 
finding the impressions of many other plants and 
animals, which are natives of those islands (the 
Canaries), he concludes that the waters flowed 
hither from the south-west.” This species is 
propagated from cuttings, and requires green- 
house protection in winter, and a warm, dry, 
| airy situation in summer, and evinces great im- 
patience of any considerable quantity of water. 
—The sow-thistle-leaved species, Cacalia sonchi- 
folia, is a tender ornamental annual from the 
East Indies, and was introduced in the latter 
part of last century. Its stem attains a height 
of about 18 inches; and its flower has a purplish 
or orange-red colour, and appears in July. The 
scarlet - flowered species, Cacalia coccinea, is a 
hardy annual, of 18 inches in height, and blooms 
in June and July. 
CACAO, —botanically Theobroma Cacao. A 
cultivated, evergreen, nuciferous, tropical tree, 
of the Byttneria tribe. It is usually but very 
improperly termed in Britain cocoa; and it fur- 
nishes the well known cocoa and chocolate of 
our tea-shops. It grows naturally, in great 
abundance, in the Caraccas, in Guayaquil, in the 
isthmus of Darien, in the Honduras, in Gauti- 
mala, in Nicaragua, in the valley of the Amazon, 
and in several other parts of tropical America ; 
it is extensively cultivated, for the sake of its 
nuts, in some of these districts, and in some of 
the islands of the West Indies; and, since 1739, 
it has been grown and kept as a curiosity in 
I. 
CACAO. 
609 
some of the hothouses of Great Britain. The 
cultivated trees seldom attain a height of more 
than 16 feet, and are usually grown in deep and 
narrow valleys, or between rows of sheltering 
plantain-trees, or in some other kind of densely 
shaded and thoroughly sheltered situation, The 
buds for the flowers and fruit do not, as in most 
other trees, come out at the extremities or on 
the young shoots of branches, but are produced 
on the larger branches and on the stem. The 
tree presents some resemblance, in both size and 
shape, to a young blackheart cherry; and the 
fruit is a large pod, shaped somewhat like a cu- 
cumber, and containing from twenty to thirty 
well-packed nuts about the size of large almonds. 
Trees of from three to eight years old yield about 
55 or 60 pods in the year, and full-grown trees 
yield about 200 or 240. The pod is easily ascer- 
tained to be ripe by its becoming yellow on the 
side next the sun. The shell of the nut is thin, 
brittle, and dark brown; and the kernel is 
brownish all through, and has a light pleasant 
odour, and an unctuous, roughish, bitterish but 
not disagreeable taste. The nuts yield, by ex- 
pression, a large quantity of oil; but they are 
cultivated solely for the sake of their cocoa husks 
and shells, and of the manufacture of their whole 
substance into chocolate. 
“In gathering the fruit,” we are told, “they | 
generally place a negro to each row of trees ; 
who, being furnished with a basket, goes from 
tree to tree, and cuts off all those pods which are 
ripe, leaving the others a longer time to ripen. 
When the basket is full, he carries the fruit, and 
lays it in a heap at one end of the plantation ; 
where, after they have gathered the whole plan- 
tation, they cut the pods lengthwise, and take out 
all the nuts, being careful to divest them of the 
pulp which closely adheres to them ; and then 
they carry them to the house, where they lay 
them in large casks, or other vessels of wood, 
raised above the ground, and cover them with 
leaves of the Indian reed and mats, upon which 
they lay some boards, putting some stones there- 
on to keep them down close, in order to press the 
nuts. In these vessels, the nuts are kept four or 
five days; during which time, they must be stir- 
red and turned every morning, otherwise they 
will be in danger of perishing from their great 
fermentation. Jn this time, they change from 
white to a dark red or brown colour. Without 
this fermentation, the nuts will not keep, but 
will sprout if they are in a damp place, or shrivel 
and dry too much if exposed to heat. After the 
nuts have been thus fermented, they should be 
taken out of the vessels, and spread on coarse 
cloths, and exposed to the sun and wind ; but at 
night or in rainy weather, they must be taken 
under shelter, otherwise the damp will spoil 
them. If the weather proves fair, three days 
will be long enough to dry them, provided they 
are carefully turned from time to time, that they 
may dry equally on every side.” 
2 
