THE ECONOMIC HOUSE 51 
floor-matting, and the like. It is also used for caulking boats and as 
a stuffing fiber. The dried kernel, known as copra, is the most im- 
portant article of commerce in the South Sea Islands. It is exported 
by millions of pounds to Europe and the United States, where it is used 
in making stearin candles and soap. The best grades of coconut oil, 
expressed from the dried kernel, furnish a butter substitute. The 
dried kernel also furnishes the desiccated coconut so much used in 
candy and cake making. The kernel of both ripe and unripe nuts is 
eaten by the natives. ‘The milk of the unripe nut is used as a beverage 
by the natives—in some islands it supplies their only drink. The open-. 
ing flowerstalk, if tapped, yields about a quart of toddy per day. The 
toddy is used fresh as a drink; is fermented into a drink known as 
tuba; or is boiled down to yield a sugar known as jaggery. Distilled 
tuba yields arrack and vino. The toddy is sometimes used in making 
vinegar. 
Cocos Datil, a coconut palm from Argentina, produces an edible 
fruit that resembles the fruit of the date palm. 
Cocos eriospatha is one of the hardiest of all the coconut palms. It 
produces an edible fruit that has the flavor of apricot. Its handsome 
bluish fronds make this a popular ornamental tree. 
Coffea arabica, or CoFFEE, is a native of Abyssinia that belongs to 
the Rubiaceae, the family to which our bedstraw, bluet, buttonbush, 
and partridge berry belong. From Abyssinia, coffee is supposed to 
have been introduced into Arabia during the fifteenth century. It 
was first used in London by a Smyrna merchant, who, in order to have 
it made properly, took with him to London a Levantine girl. This 
girl later married his coachman, and together they opened the first 
coffee shop in London, in 1652. The Dutch planted coffee in Java 
in 1696. It died out and was replanted in 1706. One of the plants 
grown by the Dutch in their botanic garden at Amsterdam was pre- 
sented to Louis XIV. He sent the plant to Martinique, and from there 
coffee culture spread through the West Indies. Coffee growing ceased 
to be profitable in the West Indies when slavery was abolished there, 
and the culture shifted to Brazil, where slavery then existed. At the 
present time Brazil supplies about three-fourths of the world’s coffee. 
There are many different varieties of coffee grown. The flavor 
of the bean, which is roasted to yield the coffee of our shops, varies 
with the variety and with the locality in which the tree is grown. 
Mocha, Java, and Pointed Bourbon have always been held to be among 
the best of all varieties. Coffee culture in Java, Ceylon, Sumatra, 
and India has been handicapped for the last half century by the pres- 
ence of a most destructive fungus disease that has so far, apparently, 
not attacked the trees of Brazil. Most coffee grown in those countries 
today is grown on trees grafted on Coffea Liberica. 
The coffee trees in the Conservatory usually bloom in the spring, 
bearing flowers with the odor of jasmine; and mature their fruit about 
Christmas time. 
Coffea Zanguebariae (C. Zanzibariensis) also produces coffee; but is 
not important in commerce. 
