Cocoa And Chocolate
The Tree, The Bean The Beverage

$ i || i i i: CULTIVATION OF THE CACAO BEAN 45 recommend one to plant cacao only at a dark moon and to gather the pods at a füll moon as the beans are then at their roundest. It reminds one of the alchemists who could only undertake a transmutation of metals when the stars were in a definite relation. The planters have perhaps more justification than. the alchemists ; there is always a remote possibility of minute efiects of gravity on the sap, or the influence of the moon’s light, which, it should be noted, is polarised. As regards the latter, Mr. C. F. Marvin, Chief of the United States Weather Bureau, has shown that one-hundredth of normal daylight does not appreciably stimulate plant activity, and füll daylight is 600,000 times greater than füll moonlight, so that the influence of moonlight on plant growth must be negligible. While the excision of live wood to obtain a good tree-form is governed partly by taste, the removal of dead wood is a necessity if the trees are to remain healthy. This form of tree-surgery requires considerable skili. To keep the tree clean and healthy it is necessary also to remove the diseased pods, the little palm-like epiphytes called “ wild pines ” (Catopsis), which grow on the branches, and parasitic plants like mistletoe. The trees in San Thomé and the Gold Coast do not seem so liable to become covered with orchids and epiphytes as those in the West Indies. In Trinidad the writer has seen cacao trees so tufted with epiphytes that they appeared to belong to an extraordinary new species. On the Gold Coast the tree stems are some-times allowed to become thickly covered with mosses and ferns. The artist finds the moss on the bark of the cacao tree one of its charms—he is delighted with the beautiful patches of russet-brown, silver and green— but the too luxuriant growth of moss has to be checked by the planter when it threatens to smother the cacao