_Cocoa_, or, literally, cacao, from the cacao-tree, comes in the form of a thick seed, twenty or thirty of which make up the contents of a gourd-like fruit, the spaces between being filled with a somewhat acid pulp. The seeds, when freed from this pulp by various processes, are first dried in the sun, and then roasted; and from these roasted seeds come various forms of cocoa. _Cocoa-shells_ are the outer husk, and by long boiling yield a pleasant and rather nutritious drink. Cocoa itself is the nut ground to powder, and sometimes mixed with sugar, the husk being sometimes ground with it. In _Chocolate_--a preparation of cocoa--the cocoa is carefully dried and roasted, and then ground to a smooth paste, the nuts being placed on a hot iron plate, and so keeping the oily matter to aid in forming a paste. Sugar and flavorings, as vanilla, are often added, and the whole pressed into cakes. The whole substance of the nut being used, it is exceedingly nutritious, and made more so by the milk and sugar added. Eaten with bread it forms not only a nourishing but a hearty meal; and so condensed is its form, that a small cake carried in traveling, and eaten with a cracker or two, will give temporarily the effect of a full meal. In a hundred parts of chocolate are found forty-eight of fatty matter or cocoa-butter, twenty-one of nitrogenous matter, four of theobromine, eleven of starch, three of cellulose, three of mineral matter, and ten of water; there being also traces of coloring matter, aromatic essence, and sugar. Twice as much nitrogenous, and twenty-five times as much fatty matter as wheaten flour, make it a valuable food, though the excess of fat will make it disagree with a very delicate stomach. _Alcohol_ is last upon our list, and scientific men are still uncertain whether or not it can in any degree be considered as a food; but we have no room for the various arguments for and against. You all know, in part at least, the effects of intemperance; and even the moderate daily drinker suffers from clouded mind, irritable nerves, and ruined digestion.