re are two seeds, but in some varieties there is a tendency
for one seed to mature, leaving the other undeveloped; this is the
"peaberry" coffee of commerce. The so-called Mocha coffee is a peaberry.

In their preparation the berries are picked when ripe and deprived of
their pulp. After pulping they are cured in the sun for about a week and
then hulled, or divested of the endocarp, a process requiring expensive
machinery. The coffee is then cleaned, and sacked.

The value of the product depends on two factors, age and the care with
which it is sorted. Formerly, in the Dutch East Indies, coffee-growing,
for the greater part, was a government privilege, and the crop was kept
for several years in storage before it was permitted to be
sold--therefore the term "Old Government" Java. Other coffee was
designated as "Private Plantations." The quality of coffee is greatly
improved with age. Brazilian and other American coffee-beans are rarely
seasoned by storage.

American coffees are almost wholly sorted by machinery. This process,
however, merely collects beans of the same size; it still leaves the
good and the bad beans together, though it is to be said that among the
largest beans there are fewer poor ones. In the coffees handled by the
Arab dealers all the sorting is done by hand, the very choice grade
selling in the large cities of Europe for the equivalent of nearly three
dollars per pound. All machine-sorted coffee is greatly improved by a
subsequent hand-sorting to remove the imperfect beans.

The naming of the different kinds of coffee is somewhat arbitrary. Thus,
Brazilian coffees are commercially known as _Rio_ because they are
shipped from the port of Rio de Janeiro; the same name is applied to the
product shipped from Santos. Nearly all Venezuela coffees are called
_Maracaibo_ although they differ much in kind and quality; most Central
American coffee is sold as _Costa Rica_; most peaberry varieties are
known as _Mocha_; and most of the East India product is popularly called
_Java_, no matter whence it comes.

[Illustration: COFFEE PRODUCTION]

Of the American coffees Rio constitutes about half the world's product.
After sorting, the larger beans are often marketed as Java coffee, and
when the beans have been roasted it is exceedingly difficult to tell the
difference. The best Maracaibo is regarded as choice coffee, but its
flavor is not liked by all coffee-drinkers. The best Honduras and Puerto
Rico coffees