A practical essay on the culture and preparation of coffee for market in the various producing countries of the world, brought down to the present time, has long been wanted, especially as the sources of supply have changed so much of late years. Porter’s “Tropical Agriculturist” has long been out of print, and my own work on “The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom” is too expensive and too diffuse for ordinary reference. The present hand-book deals with the subject in a popular form,

The coffee-tree— Coffea arabica , Linn.—is a plant belonging to the natural order Cinchonaceæ . It is a large erect bush, quite smooth in every part; leaves oblong lanceolate, acuminate, shining on the upper side, wavy, deep green above, paler below; stipules subulate, undivided. Peduncles axillary, short, clustered; corollas white, funnel-shaped, sweet-scented, with four or five oblong-spreading twisted lobes. Fruit a compressed drupe, furrowed along the side, crowned by the calyx. Seeds solita

The term chicory is an Anglicised French word, the original being chicorée. The plant is known to botanists by the name of Cichorium Intybus , and belongs to the natural order Compositæ, tribe Cichoreæ. It is an indigenous plant with a perennial root, better known probably to most readers by its English appellation of wild succory. The root is spindle-shaped, with a single or double head; externally it is whitish or greenish yellow; internally, whitish, fleshy, and milky. The roots grown in this