It is in fact not very easy to make good coffee, and it is absolutely necessary to grind and roast the beans just before using them. Very often also too little coffee is used. Tinned coffee is often adulterated with either Chicory or Endives, but those are only the two most important impurities, for burnt sugar, biscuits, locust-beans, date-stones, rye, malt, and other substances are ground up and mixed with coffee. The use of chicory is, however, more or less recognized. It is the roots which are ground up and mixed with it. They contain no _caffeine_, which is the active part of the coffee bean, and are quite harmless. At one time chicory was grown in Essex and other English counties, and was a distinctly profitable crop. Here again come in the mysterious ways of the British Government. The cultivation of chicory was absolutely forbidden by the Inland Revenue Department; but a considerable amount is still grown in Belgium and is imported to this country. Those who prefer chicory with their coffee have to pay a heavy duty; but the Belgian farmer is allowed and the British farmer is forbidden to take up a paying and profitable industry! The plant is allied to the dandelion. It occasionally occurs in this country as a weed, and is a rather striking plant with bright blue flowers. Another of these useful productions which also suffers from a heavy duty is Cocoa or Chocolate. There are a great many different plants called Co Co, or by some name very similar to it. The Cocoanut Palm furnishes not only the nuts but the fibre or coir enclosing them, as well as a great many other useful substances. The _cocaine_ used by dentists, and which deadens or stupefies the nerves of the teeth, is derived from the leaves of a Peruvian shrub, "Coca" (_Erythroxylan Coca_). These leaves are chewed in the mouth and have very extraordinary effects, especially on the Indian labourers. They are a strong nerve stimulus and take away any feeling of hunger or fatigue. It was by the use of coca leaves that the postmen of the Inca emperors in Peru were enabled to carry messages at the rate of 150 miles a day. Then again the Cocoes of the West Indian Islands is a sort of Yam (_Colocasia antiquorum_). Coco-de-mer is the fruit of a palm common in the Seychelles Islands (_Lodoicea Seychellarum_). The cocoa which gives the ordinary chocolate and cocoa of the breakfast table is the seed of a tree (_Theobroma cacao_). The name is derived from [Greek: theos], god, and [Greek: brôma], food. It may be translated, "That which the gods browse upon." This plant is one of those which were cultivated by that ancient, powerful, semi-civilized nation, the Aztecs of Mexico. They have almost entirely vanished; at any rate their descendants, if they have any, exercise practically no influence in the world, but they have left us chocolate. They fully appreciated the plant, and even more than we do, for they worshipped it with grateful and superstitious awe.