Ecuador has a treasury of wealth in her vast cacao groves. The cacao tree, which grows wild in the forests, is from sixteen to forty feet high and bears a fruit in which the beans lie buried in a cucumber-shaped pod five to ten inches long and three or four inches thick. The bean itself in its raw state resembles a thick almond. When ripe, the pods are cut from the tree by means of a knife with a curved blade, set on the end of a long pole, an implement specially designed to remove them without injury. The pods are then gathered in heaps and left on the ground to dry for a day or two before the beans are removed and cured. From cacao comes cocoa. The name “cacao” signifies the raw, and “cocoa” the finished product. There is still another name—coca—which is often confused with these, but coca is nothing like cacao. Coca is the Peruvian plant from the leaves of which cocaine is extracted. The cacao bean contains the cocoa we drink at our breakfast tables, and our chocolate. On the skill employed in the curing, which is an extremely delicate process, to a great extent depends the quality of the output and its flavor and color. When ready for the market, the bean is dark red outside and chocolate tinted within. Analyses show that it is rich in fats, albuminoids, caffeine and theobromine, which last is what imparts to it its principal characteristics. What we know as chocolate differs from cocoa in that, in the former compound, the cocoa butter is not extracted; from the latter it is. Cocoa is really a factory product. The cured bean is treated differently in the various countries to suit the taste of the public, and chocolate also is prepared in different ways for the various uses. American and French chocolates are sold all over the world.