inest of the Venezuela sorts; but they are
scarcely ever used in the Philippines, and cannot be said to form
part of their commerce. Germany contents itself with the inferior
kinds. Guayaquil cacao, which is only half the price of Caracas, is
more popular amongst the Germans than all the other varieties together.

[75] C. Scherzer, in his work on Central America, gives the cacao-tree
an existence of twenty years, and says that each tree annually produces
from 15 to 20 ounces of cacao. 1,000 plants will produce 1,250 lbs. of
cacao, worth $250; so that the annual produce of a single tree is worth
a quarter of a dollar. Mitscherlich says that from 4 to 6 lbs. of raw
beans is an average produce. A liter of dried cacao beans weighs 630
grains; of picked and roasted, 610 grains.

[76] In 1727 a hurricane destroyed at a single blast the important
cacao plantation of Martinique, which had been created by long years of
extraordinary care. The same thing happened at Trinidad.--Mitscherlich.

[77] F. Engel mentions a disease (mancha) which attacks the tree
in America, beginning by destroying its roots. The tree soon dies,
and the disease spreads so rapidly that whole groves of cacao-trees
utterly perish and are turned into pastures for cattle. Even in the
most favored localities, after a long season of prosperity, thousands
of trees are destroyed in a single night by this disease, just as the
harvest is about to take place. An almost equally dangerous foe to
cultivation is a moth whose larva entirely destroys the ripe cacao
beans; and which only cold and wind will kill. Humboldt mentions
that cacao beans which have been transported over the chilly passes
of the Cordilleras are never attacked by this pest.

[78] G. Bornoulli quotes altogether eighteen kinds; of which he
mentions only one as generally in use in the Philippines.

[79] Pili is very common in South Luzon, Samar, and Leyte; it is to be
found in almost every village. Its fruit, which is almost of the size
of an ordinary plum but not so round, contains a hard stone, the raw
kernel of which is steeped in syrup and candied in the same manner as
the kernel of the sweet pine, which it resembles in flavor. The large
trees with fruit on them, "about the size of almonds and looking like
sweet-pine kernels," which Pigafetta saw at Jomonjol were doubtless
pili-trees. An oil is expressed from the kernels much resembling
sweet almond oil. If incisions are made in the stems of th