The surplus moisture, upon reaching the bottom of the heap, drains from the slightly inclined platform into the receiving cistern, and is again pumped over the mass.
This is the cheapest and best way of making manure upon an estate, the cattle sheds and pits being arranged in the different localities most suitable for reducing the labor of transport.
The coffee berry, when ripe, is about the size of a cherry, and is shaped like a laurel berry.

The flesh has a sweet but vapid taste, and encloses two seeds of coffee.

These are carefully packed by nature in a double skin.
The cherry coffee is gathered by coolies at the rate of two bushels each per diem, and is cleared from the flesh by passing through a pulper, a machine consisting of cylindrical copper graters, which tear the flesh from the berry and leave the coffee in its second covering of parchment, The coffee is then exposed to a partial fermentation by being piled for some hours in a large heap.

This has the effect of loosening the fleshy particles, which, by washing in a cistern of running water, are detached from the berry.

It is then rendered perfectly dry in the sun or by means of artificially heated air; and, being packed in bags, it is forwarded to Colombo.