It is, therefore, again exposed on the barbecue, until it reaches a crisp dryness. (Plate 9 shows the barbecue or drying-floor on Messrs. Worms’ estate, Puselawa, in Ceylon, and the native labourers spreading the coffee to dry.) It is next submitted to the pressure of the peeler, which breaks the berry out of the parchment covering, and sets the silver skin at liberty. It may be noticed that the silver skin, though perhaps not adding two ounces to the weight of 112 lbs., gives the coffee an appearance considered to be unsightly in the London market, and, therefore, depreciates its value; its adherence to the coffee, though the cause is not known in the market, is supposed to be generally the result of bad drying on the plantation, being allowed to remain too long wet, or being permitted to heat after it is taken from the cisterns. Several processes have to be gone through before the article known in commerce as coffee is produced. In the first place, the pulpy exterior of the berry, as we have seen, has to be removed by the process of pulping, which separates the seed and its thin covering, called the parchment, from the husk. When this pulping process is completed, we have the parchment by itself in a cistern, and the next process consists in getting rid of the mucilage with which it is covered. For this purpose the water is drained from the cistern, and fermentation is allowed to take place, which it readily does after a period of twenty-four hours, or even less on a low estate, where the climate is warm, though forty-eight hours are generally required on the highest estates. [Illustration: Plate 9.--The Barbecue, or Drying-Floor, Messrs. Worms’ Estates, Puselawa.] Water is then admitted into the cistern, and the coffee being agitated by wooden rakes, the mucilage combines with the water and is drained off. After this the washed parchment coffee has to be dried to a hard stage, and as it frequently happens that during crop time there is a continuance of wet weather for weeks and months together, the chief difficulties which a planter has to contend with now present themselves. The peeler, or machine for removing the parchment, consists of a circular trough, in which a wheel is made to travel; this is generally made of wood, and shod with copper sheeting, and is turned by central pressure, like the capstan of a ship, either by hand or by the gearing of machinery attached to a steam-engine. An improvement on this has been made by constructing the travelling wheels of iron, and the trough of plates of the same metal; these plates being serrated in one direction, so as to present a rough surface to the coffee, facilitate the fracture of the parchment. Two wheels are generally made to work in one trough, each of which is provided with a kind of scraper, to stir up the coffee in its path and cause it to present a new face to the pressure.