An excellent sample of coffee, apparently of the Barbera (Abyssinia) variety, was contributed to the Great Exhibition from Norfolk Island.  It was of good color, well adapted for roasting, and a most desirable novelty from that quarter.

Dr. Gardner, of Ceylon, has taken out a patent for preparing the coffee leaf in a manner to afford a beverage like tea, that is by infusion, “forming an agreeable refreshing and nutritive article of diet.”  An infusion of the coffee-leaf has long been an article of universal consumption amongst the natives of parts of Sumatra; wherever the coffee is grown, the leaf has become one of the necessaries of life, which the natives regard as indispensable.

The coffee-plant, in a congenial soil and climate, exhibits great luxuriance in its foliage, throwing out abundance of suckers and lateral stems, especially when from any cause the main stem is thrown out of the perpendicular, to which it is very liable from its great superincumbent weight compared with the hold of its root in the ground.  The native planters, availing themselves of this propensity, often give this plant a considerable inclination, not only to increase the foliage, but to obtain new fruit-bearing stems, when the old ones become unproductive.  It is also found desirable to limit the height of the plant by lopping off the top to increase the produce, and facilitate the collecting it, and fresh sprouts in abundance are the certain consequence.  These are so many causes of the development of a vegetation, which becomes injurious to the quantity of the fruit or berry unless removed; and when this superabundant foliage can be converted into an article of consumption, as hitherto the case in Sumatra, the culture must become the more profitable; and it is clearly the interest of the planters of Ceylon to respond to the call of Dr. Gardner, and by supplying the leaf on reasonable terms, to assist in creating a demand for an article they have in abundance, and which for the want of that demand is of no value to them.  It ought to be mentioned also, that the leaves which become ripe and yellow on the tree and fall off in the course of nature, contain the largest portion of extract, and make the richest infusion; and I have no doubt, should the coffee leaf ever come into general use, the ripe leaf will be collected with as much care as the ripe fruit.

The mode of the preparation by the natives is this.  The ends of the branches and suckers, with the leaves on; are taken from the tree and broken into lengths of from twelve to eighteen inches.  These are arranged in the split of a stick or small bamboo, side by side, forming a truss in such a manner, that the leaves all appear on one side, and the stalk on the other, the object of which is to secure equal roasting, the stalks being thus exposed to the fire together, and the leaves together.  The slit being tied up in two or three places, and a part of the stick or bamboo left as a handle, the truss is held over a