Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 129.djvu/774

766  their weary spirits and helping their memory." Abyssinian sentinels on night-duty keep drowsiness at a distance by chewing the leaves of the Catha edulis; Magnenus records that a soldier at the siege of Valencia, in 1636, underwent the greatest fatigue and lived without food for a week, thanks to a few quids of tobacco; and we ourselves knew a man who, when compelled to work through the night, kept himself awake and up to the mark by merely chewing tea. Tea being within everybody's reach, perhaps it would be as well if, before setting about importing coca-leaves, the medical gentlemen who have displayed such enthusiasm in behalf of coca, were to try the effect of tea and lime, and let the world know the result of the experiment.

It is surely a pity that three such important products as coca, the cocoa of the breakfast-table, and the cocoa-nut, though completely distinct both botanically and in their properties and uses, should have names so provokingly similar that most people, we believe, are puzzled to say which is which. The Erythroxylon coca of which we have been speaking has no connection with the cocoa-tree (Theobroma cacao), which yields the well-known beverage cocoa or chocolate. Equally distinct from both is the cocoa-nut palm (Cocos nucifera), the fruit of which supplies the inhabitants of many tropical coasts and islands with a great part of their food, and also furnishes the cocoa-nut oil of commerce. It is the more solid ingredient of this oil, known as cocoa-nut butter, that is so much used as an unguent when mixed with a little olive-oil to give it softness. Among the many changes of nomenclature constantly going on, could nothing be done to remedy the perplexity caused by so many diverse articles being known by names so closely resembling each other?

 

 

 

 