ao Shell_, Society of Chemical
Industry's Journal, 1918, 240). The price of shell has shown great
variation. The following figures are for the grade of shell which is
almost entirely free from cocoa:

CACAO SHELL.

AVERAGE PRICE PER TON.

Year 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919
Price 65/- 70/- 70/- 70/- 90/- 128/- 284/- 161/-

PRICE PER FOOD UNIT.

_July_, 1915. _Jan._, 1919.
_s._ _d._ _s._ _d._
English Oats 3 1-1/2 3 8
Cotton Seed Cake 2 5 3 11
Linseed Cake 1 7 3 5
Brewers Grains (dried) 1 6-1/2 3 8-1/2
Decorticated Cotton Cake 1 6 3 3-1/2
Cacao Shell 8-1/4 1 4-1/2

The above table speaks for itself; the figures are from the Journal of
the Board of Agriculture; I have added cacao shell for comparison.

CHAPTER VIII

THE COMPOSITION AND FOOD VALUE OF COCOA AND CHOCOLATE

Before the Spaniards made themselves Masters of Mexico, no
other drink was esteem'd but that of cocoa; none caring for
wine, notwithstanding the soil produces vines everywhere in
great abundance of itself.

John Ogilvy's _America_, 1671.

The early writers on chocolate generally became lyrical when they wrote
of its value as a food. Thus in the _Natural History of Chocolate_, by
R. Brookes (1730), we read that an ounce of chocolate contains as much
nourishment as a pound of beef, that a woman and a child, and even a
councillor, lived on chocolate alone for a long period, and further:
"Before chocolate was known in Europe, good old wine was called the milk
of old men; but this title is now applied with greater reason to
chocolate, since its use has become so common, that it has been
perceived that chocolate is, with respect to them, what milk is to
infants."

A more temperate tone is shown in the following, from _A Curious
Treatise of the Nature and Quality of Chocolate_, by Antonio Colmenero
de Ledesma, a Spaniard, Physician and Chyrurgion of the city of Ecija,
in Andaluzia (printed at the Green Dragon, 1685):

So great is the number of those persons, who at present do
drink of Chocolate, that not only in the West Indies, whence
this drink has its original and beginning, but also in
Spain, Italy, Flanders, &