_The first printed reference to coffee in English--Early mention of coffee by noted English travelers and writers--The Lacedaemonian "black broth" controversy--How Conopios introduced coffee drinking at Oxford--The first English coffee house in Oxford--Two English botanists on coffee_ English travelers and writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were quite as enterprising as their Continental contemporaries in telling about the coffee bean and the coffee drink. The first printed reference to coffee in English, however, appears as _chaoua_ in a note by a Dutchman, Paludanus, in _Linschoten's Travels_, the title of an English translation from the Latin of a work first published in Holland in 1595 or 1596, the English edition appearing in London in 1598. A reproduction made from a photograph of the original work, with the quaint black-letter German text and the Paludanus notation in roman, is shown herewith. Hans Hugo (or John Huygen) Van Linschooten (1563-1611) was one of the most intrepid of Dutch travelers. In his description of Japanese manners and customs we find one of the earliest tea references. He says: Their manner of eating and drinking is: everie man hath a table alone, without table-clothes or napkins, and eateth with two pieces of wood like the men of Chino: they drinke wine of Rice, wherewith they drink themselves drunke, and after their meat they use a certain drinke, which is a pot with hote water, which they drinke as hote as ever they may indure, whether it be Winter or Summer. Just here Bernard Ten Broeke Paludanus (1550-1633), Dutch savant and author, professor of philosophy at the University of Leyden, himself a traveler over the four quarters of the globe, inserts his note containing the coffee reference. He says: The Turks holde almost the same manner of drinking of their _Chaona_[46], which they make of certaine fruit, which is like unto the Bakelaer[47], and by the Egyptians called _Bon_ or _Ban_[48]: they take of this fruite one pound and a half, and roast them a little in the fire and then sieth them in twenty pounds of water, till the half be consumed away: this drinke they take every morning fasting in their chambers, out of an earthen pot, being verie hote, as we doe here drinke _aquacomposita_[49] in the morning: and they say that it strengtheneth and maketh them warme, breaketh wind, and openeth any stopping. Van Linschooten then completes his tea reference by saying: The manner of dressing their meat is altogether contrarie unto other nations: the aforesaid warme water is made with the powder of a certaine hearbe called _Chaa_, which is much esteemed, and is well accounted among them. The _chaa_ is, of course, tea, dialect _t'eh_.