not allow the berries to pass on till they have been denuded of their red epidermis by a gentle squeeze against its rough surface.  The far greater portion of the pulps are separated by being carried past the lower chops upon the sharp points of the copper, and thrown out behind, and a few are left with the parchment coffee.  As from the different sizes of the berries, and their crowding for precedence as they descend from the hopper above to the gentle embrace of the barrel and upper chop, some pass unpulped, the coffee as it comes from the lower chop is made to fall upon a riddle, which separates the unpulped cherries.  These are put back again, and passed through a pulper with the upper chop set closer.  The secret of working-appears to be the proper setting of the chops, and many have been the schemes proposed for reducing this to a certainty.  Perhaps, after all, few plans are better than the old wedges, by tightening or loosening of which the chop is kept in the required position.  Within the last few years, the machine has been considerably improved by being formed entirely of iron, cog-wheels being substituted in the place of straps and drums to move the riddle, and the riddle itself is now formed of two sieves, by which the chance of unpulped berries reaching the parchment is lessened.  On some estates, water-wheels have been put up to drive several pulpers at one time, which otherwise would require from two to four men each to work them, but from the costly buildings and appurtenances which such machinery renders necessary, they are rare.

Although the operation of pulping is so simple, it is one which requires the machine to be set in such a way that the greatest quantity of work may be done, or, in other words, the smallest quantity of unpulped berries be allowed to pass through.  On the other hand, the berries must not be subjected to injury from the barrel; for if the parchment skin is pricked through, the berry will appear, when cured, with an unsightly brown mark upon it.  Several new coverings for barrels, instead of punctured copper, have been tried; among others, coir-cloth and wire net, but the old material is not as yet superseded.  After pulping, the coffee in parchment is received into cisterns, in which it is, by washing, deprived of the mucilaginous matter that still adheres to it.  Without this most necessary operation, the mucilage would ferment and expose the berry to injury, from its highly corrosive qualities.

As some portion of pulp finds its way with the coffee to the cistern, which, if suffered to remain would, by its long retention of moisture, lengthen the subsequent drying process, various methods have been adopted to remove it.  One mode is to pass the coffee a second time through a sieve worked by two men; another to pick it off the surfaces of the cistern, to which it naturally rises.