Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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These Seeds Are Taken Out Of The Pulp, But Yet
Retaining A Part Of It Adherent To Them.
When the seed has
germinated it is sown, and it produces plants capable of bearing
the heat of the sun better than those which spring up in the shade
in coffee-plantations.
In this country five thousand three hundred
coffee-trees are generally planted in a fanega of ground, amounting
to five thousand four hundred and seventy-six square toises. This
land, if it be capable of artificial irrigation, costs five hundred
piastres in the northern part of the province. The coffee-tree
flowers only in the second year, and its flowering lasts only
twenty-four hours. At this time the shrub has a charming
appearance; and, when seen from afar, it appears covered with snow.
The produce of the third year becomes very abundant. In plantations
well weeded and watered, and recently cultivated, trees will bear
sixteen, eighteen, and even twenty pounds of coffee. In general,
however, more than a pound and a half or two pounds cannot be
expected from each plant; and even this is superior to the mean
produce of the West India Islands. The coffee trees suffer much
from rain at the time of flowering, as well as from the want of
water for artificial irrigation, and also from a parasitic plant, a
new species of loranthus, which clings to the branches. When, in
plantations of eighty or a hundred thousand shrubs, we consider the
immense quantity of organic matter contained in the pulpy berry of
the coffee-tree, we may be astonished that no attempts have been
made to extract a spirituous liquor from them.* (* The berries
heaped together produce a vinous fermentation, during which a very
pleasant alcoholic smell is emitted. Placing, at Caracas, the ripe
fruit of the coffee-tree under an inverted jar, quite filled with
water, and exposed to the rays of the sun, I remarked that no
extrication of gas took place in the first twenty-four hours. After
thirty-six hours the berries became brown, and yielded gas. A
thermometer, enclosed in the jar in contact with the fruit, kept at
night 4 or 5 degrees higher than the external air. In the space of
eighty-seven hours, sixty berries, under various jars, yielded me
from thirty-eight to forty cubic inches of a gas, which underwent
no sensible diminution with nitrous gas. Though a great quantity of
carbonic acid had been absorbed by the water as it was produced, I
still found 0.78 in the forty inches. The remainder, or 0.22, was
nitrogen. The carbonic acid had not been formed by the absorption
of the atmospheric oxygen. That which is evolved from the berries
of the coffee-tree slightly moistened, and placed in a phial with a
glass stopple filled with air, contains alcohol in suspension; like
the foul air which is formed in our cellars during the fermentation
of must. On agitating the gas in contact with water, the latter
acquires a decidedly alcoholic flavour.
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