The conies have been regarded as the smallest and daintiest of all the existing species of odd-toed animals. Naturalists, however, have held widely divergent opinions as to the classification of the pretty cliff-dwellers. Pallas, because of their habits and outward appearance, called them rodents. Oken thought them to be related to the marsupials, or pouched animals. Cuvier placed them in his order of "many-toed animals," which classification has also been disputed, and Huxley has raised them to the dignity of representatives of a distinct order. Who shall decide where all pretend to know? COFFEE. (_Coffea Arabica L._) DR. ALBERT SCHNEIDER, Northwestern University School of Pharmacy. "Directly after coffee the band began to play." --_Greville, Memoirs, June 5, 1831._ Coffee is the seed of a small evergreen tree or shrub ranging from 15 to 25 feet in height. The branches are spreading or even pendant with opposite short petioled leaves, which are ovate, smooth, leathery, and dark green. The flowers are perfect, fragrant, occurring in groups of from three to seven in the axils of the leaves. The corolla is white, the calyx green and small. The ovary is green at first, changing to yellowish, and finally to deep red or purple at maturity. Each ovary has two seeds, the so-called coffee beans. The coffee tree is a native of the tropical parts of Africa, in Abyssinia and the interior. The Arabians were among the first to transport it to their native country for the purposes of cultivation. From Arabia it was soon transplanted to other tropical countries. The name coffee (_Kaffee_, Ger., _Cafféier_, Fr.) was supposed to have been derived from the Arabian word _Kahwah_ or _Cahuah_, which referred to the drink made from the coffee beans as well as to wines. It is now generally believed that the word was derived from Kaffa, a country of the Abyssinian highlands where the plant grows wild very abundantly.