CACAO OR COCOA.

The chocolate nuts or seeds, termed cacao, are the fruit of species of
_Theobroma_, an evergreen tree, native of the Western Continent. That
commonly grown is _T. cacao_; but Lindley enumerates two other
species, _T. bicolor_, a native of New Granada; and _T. Guianensis_,
with yellow flowers, a native of Guiana. The seeds being nourishing
and agreeable to most people, are kept in the majority of houses in
America, as a part of the provisions of the family. By pressure they
yield fatty oil, called butter of cacao. They also contain a
crystalline principle analogous to caffeine, called theobromine. The
common cacao of the shops consists generally of the roasted beans, and
sometimes of the roasted integuments of the beans, ground to powder.
The consumption of cacao in the United Kingdom is about three millions
of pounds annually, yielding a revenue of £15,500. Few tropical
products are more valuable or more useful as food to man than cacao.
It is without any exception the cheapest food that we can conceive,
and were it more generally employed, so that the berries should not be
more than two, three, or, at most, six months old, from the time of
gathering (for, if kept longer, they lose their nutritive properties),
even a smaller quantity than that usually taken in a cup would
suffice: in fact, cacao cannot be _too_ new. The cacao beans lie in a
fruit somewhat like a cucumber, about five inches long and
three-and-a-half inches thick, which contains from twenty to thirty
beans, arranged in five regular rows with partitions between, and
which are surrounded with a rose-colored spongy substance, like that
of water melons. There are fruits, however, so large as to contain
from forty to fifty beans. Those grown in the West India islands, as
well as Berbice and Demerara, are much smaller, and have only from six