Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

 WORK BRITAIN HL’SKIXG COFFEE AT THE LONDON DOCKS. Cassell is increased by bringing it into the market with the protective parchment envelope, and the first operation, which, as with tea, is carried out in the bonded warehouse, consists in the removal of the parchment. This is known as husking, and the machine em- ployed nips the horny substance of the skin and drags it away, exposing the two seeds to a blast of air which carries off the lighter husk, as wheat is winnowed from its chaff. This coffee husl< ing of the fruit is the plantation, and berry is imported in a parchment has been already removed, found, however, that the value of the HAND-PICKING COFFEE BERRIES AT THE LONDON DOCKS. used as a manure» and it is upon the cleaned or husked berry that the duty is assessed. The next operation consists in bulking* the berry and throw- ing it into a hopper, where it is sifted into bags, and the better sorts are laboriously picked over by girls, who are shown at work in one of our illustrations. obtained by an infusion of the berry. The coffee plant is a bush indigenous to Abyssinia, where its properties may have been known in very early times. But it was the Mahome- tans who first brought coffee drinking into general use, and it was imported into England a few years before the introduction of tea, the first public coffee house having been established in St. Michael’s Alley, Corn- hill, in 1652, by the Greek valet of a Turkey merchant. The drinking 1^0 1 of coffee spread with marvellous fe, rapidity, and, by way of comparison with the figures already cited in BWlU* the case of tea, it may be added that the quantity consumed in the United Kingdom in the year 1801 was about 1,000,000 lb., whereas ■ the total import in the first year of the following century was up- wards of 109,000,000 lb., valued at £3,294,871, the amount of duty paid upon the quantity passed for home consumption being ^189,783. Of the total import, however, only a fourth part was grown in Greater Britain. The coffee fruit resembles a cherry in appearance, and within the yellowish pulp there are two seeds, enclosed in a tough membrane called the parchment. The pulp- usually performed upon a large quantity of the form from which the It is coffee