Morning journal and courier., 1881-02-18
sheffield Scientific school.

C0aQ1CSs course AG NOIJn Ou0L40Au I1dA1 4fsSS evening on the subject Chocolate" by Prof. Daniel G. Eaton. The lecture embodied the results of careful investigation and research, information obtained from rare books, and was both entertaining and instructive. Samples of the various reliable kinds of chocolate in use were shown and submitted to the taste of the members of the profes- sor's audience, which was large and included many prominent people of the city; also oth- CT interesting samples. An extract from the lecture is as follows:
 The name chocolate is nearly the same in most European languages, and is taken from the Mexican name of the drink chocolah or cacahuatl All is common enough in Mexl- can words, and is known to signify water. What the first part of the word means is not so clear A French writer says it signifies noise, and that the drink was SO named be- cause it was beaten to froth before being drunk.
 It is certain that the Spaniards found choco- late in common use among Mexicans at the time of the invasion under Cortes, in 1519, and that the importation of it into Spain be- gan immediately. The Spaniards long kept the chocolate to themselves, and it was not till after many years that the rest of the world was permitted to enjoy It, The MoX1CauS nOG Ou1y uS0u CuOCO4alC ss5 Q staple article of food, but used the seeds of the cacao tree as 8 medium of exchange. Bernal Diaz, who wrote the chronicles of the conquest of Mexico, states that the seeds were made up into packages of 5000, called
 s'Xiquepiles,' and used as money. Baker ob- serves thereupon that the Mexican Secretary of the Treasury at that happy period was not called upon to exercise his mind over the ques- tion of issuing his reserves for the purp ose of moving the crops the currency and the crops went together, and fnanciering was a simple problen'' Chiffon, as quoted by Hakluyt and then by Sir Haas Sloane, tells similar story. He says: Leaving Tecoan- about 50 leagues in the desolate province of Soconusco, where there groweth cacao, which
 the Christians carry from thence into Nova Hispania, for it will not grow in any cold
 country. The Indians of this country pay the king their tribute in cacao, giving him
 400 ca7gGs, and every carga is 24,0O0 al- monds, which is worth in Mexico thirty
 pieces of rials of plate The Indians also pay their tribute in cacao from Canpeche." An
 other old writer says: t1n certain provinces called Guatimala and Soconusco there is
 growing great store of cacao, which is a
 berry like unto an almond. It is the best
 merchandise that is in all the Indies. The Indians make drink of it and in like manner
 meat to eat. It goeth currently for money in any market or fair, and may buy flesh, fish, bread or cheese, or other things"
 Chocolate is prepared from the seeds, or almonds. as the old writers called them, of the caeao tree. The origin of this word
 cacao or kako, as the makers of dictionaries
 would have US pronounce the word, is ob-
 scure. It is probably taken from the Mexi
 can word represented in the first part of the
 word chocolate. Here I must stop to say
 that the cocoanut tree has nothing to do with
 chocolate or cacao. It is palm tree differ
 ent in every respect from the cacao, and even
 the name, though much like the other, is
 supposed to have very different origin. So,
 too with the ''coca'' of Peru; it consists of
 the leaves of a species of Erythroxylon, or
 red wood, and is a stimulating narcotic,
 stronger than tobacco.
 Cacao seeds, or beans, or almonds, come from a small tree, native in Mexico and Cen, tral America, to which Linnoeus gave the
 name of IIheo6qomG CdcG0, Theobroms
 meaning flood of the Gods" The tree be- longs to the natural order of Sterculiacee, 8
 family of about Al genera and 52O spe- cies, inhabiting the warmer regions of the world. None of them grow naturally in our
 climate or in Europe and excepting the lit. tie yellow lowered Maherni, they are very seldom seen in our conservatories.
 The cacao tree is usually from 20 to 30 feet high it has a single trunk, dividing into several branches at 8 or 10 feet above the ground. The leaves are nearly as large as one's hand, oblong, pointed smooth and moi serrated or toothed in the edge The flowers grow in small clusters sometimes springine from the main trunk, but oftener from the smaller branches. The flower is small, mol over an inch broad; it has often rosy caly1 leaves, yelIowish, somewhat crumpled petals the stamens forming a ive-toothed yase-like structure, with two or three anthers in eacE
 of the hollows between the teeth the pisti single and ending in 8 6ve-cleft stigma The fruit is from to 10 inches long, has rather
 thick leathery shell, and contains from 15 tC 20 seeds imbedded in a soft or perishable pulp, somewhat resembling that of water
 melon The seed coat or shell is thin anc
 brownish in color,-I may say chocolate color ;-the meat like that of the bean anC
 the almond consists entirely of the embryo
 or rudimentary plantlet, at first white but
 changed to dark brown by the treatment il
 receives have two excellent accounts of the cacao tree, and if there is time will read both The first is from the pen of Frederick A
 Ober, who visited the Caribbee Islands chief ly to collect the rare and beautiful birds o1 that region. He says:
 "Though cacao grows in all the islands 0. the Caribbean Sea, I found it most abundant in Grenada, where it shares with sugar ex elusive cultivation, finding soil and climate
 most suitable for it's perfect growth. Thii plant was discovered in Mexico by the Span iards, who invaded that country in 1519; WI
 read in the ''True History of the Conquest o1 Mexico" by Capt. Bernal Diaz, one of the conquerors, that fruit of all the kind tht country produces was laid before Monte zuma he eat but very little, but from time to time liquor prepared from cocoa and o a stimulating or corroborative quality, as WI are told, was presented to him in golder cups We could not at that time see if ht drank it or not, but observed number o
 jars, above fifty, brought in and filled witl foaming chocolate" :"
 Its adoption and introduction was rapid and now 1t fiourishes nearly all over thu tropical world, and in the lesser Antilles anG along the northern coast of South America i grows in perfection. The cacao seldom reaches height of over 30 feet, and woul6 be passed by without notice were 1t not fol it's peculiar fruit. It fourishes only in damI valleys, on the sides of shady hills, and em bosomed among mountain forests where tht
 surrounding scenery is eminently interesting So little care does it need and growing a' it does, in soil so rocky that it will produce
 nothing else there, nearly every negro has few trees around his hut, which yield hin sufficient for his simple wants. The treel grow to a height of 20 feet, some 30, with { leaf something like that of the chestnut. Int tops of the trees are intergrown, forming { dense shade beneath which, among the smootl stones, one can walk in comfort even al noon. Dead and fallen leaves strew tht ground thickly, even as the chestnut leavel in autumn, and all around are little heaps o1 opened pods from which the pulp has beer taken and the seeds extracted.
 The tree is about as long in attaining it's
 growth as the orange tree; it may produce ir the third year from the seed, but 1t does not l reach its full bearing period until at the age of or 8. It is a tender plant during the
 first stages of it's existence and, like the coffee, must be shaded by some broad leave6
 plant like the plantain or banana, which, o1 quicker growth, are set out near the seed al the time of planting. Heat and moisture are indispensable to it's existence, but one with out the other proves fatal to it's growth. We may consider it az blessing or curse to the islands, according to the light in which we view it. As the bread fruit is reekoned bJ the planters as a curse, because it enables the negro to live without work, and deprives the plantation of his labor, so the cacao, by giv ing it's cultivators certain income without
 toll after the first few years of it's growth, in- duces the production of an idle and conse- quent1y insolent population. Once started in life with an acre or so of cacao trees the
 negro asks for nothing more; his wife and
 children gather the harvest, and he enjoys an
 idle existence as only negro knows how.
 The fruit of the cacao resembles some
 what an overripe cucumber about six inches
 in lenCth oval and Dointad Many of the