~Venezuela~, one of the earliest cultivating lands, is the home of the Criollo bean, and of the most splendid specimens of bean in general, sorts which play a prominent part in the Chocolate Manufacture. The Venezuelan bean is rather long and round, and its kernel of a beautiful light brown, with a mild sweet flavour. Unfortunately the plantations have recently been interspersed with Forastero or Trinidad-Criollo trees—called in Venezuela “Trinitarios because brought over from Trinidad, a species which requires less attention and bears more fruit, but which just on that account supplies commoner and mediocre beans, slowly fermenting, and often developing a violet hue. The preparation is here of the simplest; the beans e. g. are dried on clay-covered floors, and in rainy weather earthy fragments often adhere to them. Yet such “Patios” or “Then-dales”, (clay floors) are only in use on the small “haciendas” (plantations). The colouring of the Venezuelan bean with an ocre-like earth constitutes an especial peculiarity. It is adopted in particular for the medium and finer sorts. The earth is mostly sent from the neighbourhood of Choroni to the two large shipping ports Puerto Cabello and La Guayra, where the colouring or “Earthification” of the cacaos to be exported ensues. The earth, varying in colour from a dirty yellow to brick-red, is mixed to a thin paste with sea-water, and afterwards placed in the sun on large sieves, or spread over cement floors. Where the colouring takes place immediately on the plantation, the yellowish brown earth everywhere available is utilised; and where sea-water cannot be obtained, as on the Rio Tuy, for example, there the beans are coloured with a mixture prepared from crushed and almost liquid cacao fruits and this same yellowish brown earth, as the use of fresh water is thought to afford but inferior protection against mould growths. Such juice-coloured cacaos, and occasionally also the Ocumare sorts, are often covered with a rather thick earthy crust. Professional opinion concerning the utility of this colouring varies greatly. In France, the principal country consuming Venezuelan cacao, it is still maintained that the thin earthy crust not only enables the bean to resist the penetration of mildew, but also admits of a kind of after-fermentation, together with developement and preservation of the most valuable constituents of the cacao bean. Colouring is then the rule for the finer Caracas sorts, and all varieties shipped through Puerto Cabello; it is also in use at Carupano, for export to Spain. The Venezuelan cacaos are divided as follows, and with one exception take their names from the chief shipping ports, to which they are brought in small sailing vessels tapping the villages dotted along the coast. 1. ~Maracaibo~ cacao, the noble, large, and always uncoloured bean found on the shore of Sea of Maracaibo.