There is present in the bean from 6 to 8 percent of water, a factor which bodes well for the proper germination of the seed, as when this latter is deprived of moisture, e. g. in the course of a too thorough drying, it speedily decays. Water is still evident in small quantities even in the largest and almost withered beans, as will be seen on comparison of the foregoing analyses. 2. ~Fat.~ As a constituent at the expense of which respiration is effected, fat remains one of the most important resources of plant. It has a twofold excellence in this connection, and firstly as a highly calorifacient and carboniferous substance, and again because such a reserve enables the living organism to oxidise with particular ease, wherefore it is found accumulated in somewhat significant measure in the majority of seeds. When seen under the microscope it appears either as round coherent masses, or as crystalline aggregates clearly distinguishable from the rest of the cell contents on treatment with a solution of osmic acid. The fat in the cacao bean usually amounts to from 50-56 percent, or one half of the total weight of the shelled beans; the shell also contains from 4 to 5 percent of fat.[25] The unfermented bean has frequently, in addition to its bitter taste, a most unpleasant flavour, attributable to the rancidity of its fatty contents. The raw bean contains rather more fat than the roasted bean, for whilst the one averages from 50 to 55 percent, there is seldom more than 48-52 percent in the other. The cause of this phenomenon may be connected with the enrichment of the shells in fat, and in some instances, as when the beans are over-roasted, is to be ascribed to the chemical change which the play of burning heat on fatty bodies involves, when a destructive decomposition of the whole ensues, with formations of acroleine. Chemically considered, cacao butter consists of a mixture of so-called esters, or compounds connected with ether, such as the glycerides of fatty acids, and contains, in addition to stearine, palmatine, and laurine[26], the glyceride of arachidic acid. It was also formerly supposed that formic, acetic and butyric acids were among the constituents of this ingredient, but the view has been proved erroneous by Lewkowitsch[27]; similarly, the presence of theobromic acid alleged by Kingzett[28] has been called into question by Graf.[29]