CACAO.
If A census could be taken of all hungry chil dren to-day, and they could have "just what they want" to cure what ails them, the order for choco late would be bigger than for any other on the list. Here is a candy that is a nutritious food, too. It has not the objectionable features of most candies, if good grades are bought. A generation ago, children had never heard of chocolate, and very little came to America. To illustrate how suddenly chocolate and cocoa have come in: the imports increased 70 per cent. between 1901 and 1905, amounting to 70,000,000 pounds annually at the time of the last census. European coun tries are quite as fond of chocolate as the United States. Hamburg is the greatest port and distributing centre for this article. Havre is second. The Dutch are great chocolate and cocoa manufacturers and consumers. So are the Swiss. Much of our importation is from these countries, as the labels tell us. The raw materials for our own factories come chiefly from Trinidad.
The cacao is a small tropical tree whose hard seeds furnish the cocoa and chocolate of com merce. "Cocoa" is merely a misspelling of the Spanish name of the tree. When the botanist, Linnxus, was called upon to give the tree a scientific name, he sampled its fruit in the form of a cup of hot chocolate. So happy it made the great man to know that any tree could produce so delicious a beverage, he did not hesitate a moment. He called it "Theobroma," which means "food of the gods." By that name botanists all call the cacao trees.
Off in the river bottoms of parts of Central and South America, the Theobroma grows wild. The trees are also found in rank forests in British Guiana, under Dutch rule called Demarara.
When the Spanish explorers came to Mexico first they found the natives growing plantations of cacao trees they had transplanted from the wilds. From that day the cultivation of the tree has spread to the tropics of all countries.
The traveller who visits the cacao plantations notes with surprise that the cultivated trees do not differ from the wild ones; that new orchards are grown from seed, or from little trees dug out of the woods. The idea of improving the stock
by selection, and multiplying varieties by grafting and budding in nurseries, has not yet been put into practice. The cacao industry is waiting for northern scientific minds to work out these prob lems.
The most important fact so far discovered by growers of the tree is that, though it is almost universal to see the plantations on moist ground, the trees do far better on upland soil. It re quires care to make the little trees comfortable when first transplanted. They must be watered and shaded by taller plants for a time.
The native planters learned long ago that bearing plants are best as "nurse trees" to the cacaos. They did not know why. We know that only the plants of the pod-bearing family gather nitrogen from the air and store it in nodules on the roots. When the tops die, the stored ni trogen is given to the soil by the slow decay of the roots. So the leguminous nurse trees first protect the cacaos from sun and wind, but afterward they feed them.
The cacao grows to thirty feet in height, and reaches the end of its bearing period at about thirty-six years. Four-year-old trees begin to bear. The fruit is a rough, red, yellow, or brown pod, six inches to a foot long, tapering at each end. Inside the rind is a pulpy mass in which are em bedded twenty to thirty-five hard seeds, clustered somewhat as watermelon seeds are, at the centre of the pod. The seeds are the useful parts.
Gathering the cacao pods is particular business, and must be done by hand. They grow out of the main trunk, and out of the big branches, a very strange arrangement it seems to those who are used to seeing oranges and apples borne on the slender branches of the trees. In cutting the pods from the trunk one must avoid cutting the encircling buds that are set close to the stem of each. New pods come from these buds. A single fruit follows each cluster of blossoms.