E-text prepared by Robert Cicconetti, Louise Pryor,
and the
Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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Spelling is inconsistent and has been neithermodernised nor corrected.
In the original, footnotes are marked withlower case letters, numbers, or asterisks. In this transcription, theasterisks have been replaced by the number of the page on which thefootnote appears.
Contractions (such as atq; for atque) have not beenexpanded.
BEING
A Distinct and Particular Account of the Cocoa-tree, its Growth andCulture, and the Preparation, Excellent Properties, and MedicinalVertues of its Fruit.
Wherein the Errors of those who have wrote upon this Subject arediscover’d; the Best Way of Making Chocolate is explain’d; andseveral Uncommon Medicines drawn from it, are communicated.
Translated from the last Edition of the French,
By R. BROOKES, M. D.
The Second Edition.
LONDON:
Printed for J. Roberts, near the Oxford-Arms in Warwick-Lane.
M dcc.xxx.
If the Merit of a Natural History depends upon the Truth of the Factswhich are brought to support it, then an unprejudiced Eye-Witness ismore proper to write it, than any other Person; and I dare even flattermyself, that this will not be disagreeable to the Publicknotwithstanding its Resemblance to the particular Treatises ofColmenero (1), Dufour (2), and several others who have wrote upon the sameSubject. Upon examination, so great a Difference will appear, that no one can justly accuse me of having borrow’d any thing from theseWriters.
This small Treatise is nothing but the Substance and Result of theObservations that I made in the American Islands, during the fifteenYears which I was obliged to stay there, upon the account of hisMajesty’s Service. The great Trade they drive there in Chocolate,excited my Curiosity to examine more strictly than ordinary into itsOrigin, Culture, Properties, and Uses. I was not a little surprized whenI every day discover’d, as to the Nature of the Plant, and the Customsof the Country, a great Number of Facts contrary to the Ideas, andPrejudices, for which the Writers on this Subject have given room.
For this reason, I resolved to examine every thing myself, and torepresent nothing but as it really was in Nature, to advance nothing butwhat I had experienced, and even to doubt of the Experiments themselves,till I had repeated them with the utmost Exactness. Without thesePrecautions, there can be no great Dependance on the greatest Part ofthe Facts, which are produced by those who write upon any HistoricalMatter from Memorandums; which, from the Nature of the Subject, theycannot fully comprehend.
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