the roasted beans, and sometimes of the roasted integuments of the beans, ground to powder.  The consumption of cacao in the United Kingdom is about three millions of pounds annually, yielding a revenue of L15,500.  Few tropical products are more valuable or more useful as food to man than cacao.  It is without any exception the cheapest food that we can conceive, and were it more generally employed, so that the berries should not be more than two, three, or, at most, six months old, from the time of gathering (for, if kept longer, they lose their nutritive properties), even a smaller quantity than that usually taken in a cup would suffice:  in fact, cacao cannot be too new.  The cacao beans lie in a fruit somewhat like a cucumber, about five inches long and three-and-a-half inches thick, which contains from twenty to thirty beans, arranged in five regular rows with partitions between, and which are surrounded with a rose-colored spongy substance, like that of water melons.  There are fruits, however, so large as to contain from forty to fifty beans.  Those grown in the West India islands, as well as Berbice and Demerara, are much smaller, and have only from six to fifteen; their development being less perfect than other parts of South America.  After the maturation of the fruit, when their green colour has changed to a dark yellow, they are plucked, opened, their beans cleared of the marrowy substance, and spread out to dry in the air.  In the West Indies they are immediately packed up for the market when they are dried; but in Caraccas they are subjected to a species of slight fermentation, by putting them into tubs or chests, covering them with boards or stones, and turning them over every morning to equalize the operation.  They emit a good deal of moisture, and lose the natural bitterness and acrimony of their taste by this process, as well as some of their weight.  Instead of wooden tubs, pits or trenches dug in the ground are sometimes had recourse to for curing the beans; an operation called earthing.  They are, lastly, exposed to the sun and dried.  According to Lampadius, the kernels of the West India cacao beans contain in 100 parts, besides water, 53.1 of fat or oil, 16.7 of an albuminous brown matter, which contains all the aroma of the bean; 10.91 of starch, 73/4 of gum or mucilage, 0.9 of lignine, and 2.01 of a reddish dye-stuff, somewhat akin to the pigment of cochineal.  The husks form 12 per cent, of the weight of the beans.  The fatty matter is of the consistence of tallow, white, of a mild agreeable taste, and not apt to turn rancid by keeping.  It melts only at 112 degrees Fahr., and should, therefore, make tolerable candles.  It is obtained by exposing the beans to strong pressure in canvas bags, after they have been steamed or soaked in boiling water for some time.  From five to six ounces of butter may be thus obtained from a pound of cacao.  It has a reddish tinge when first expressed, but it becomes white by boiling with water.