Mu·sang n. Zool. A small animal of Java (Paradoxirus fasciatus), allied to the civets. It swallows, but does not digest, large quantities of ripe coffee berries, thus serving to disseminate the coffee plant; hence it is called also coffee rat.

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 Cof·fee n.
 1. The “beans” or “berries” (pyrenes) obtained from the drupes of a small evergreen tree of the genus Coffea, growing in Abyssinia, Arabia, Persia, and other warm regions of Asia and Africa, and also in tropical America.
 2. The coffee tree.
 Note: ☞ There are several species of the coffee tree, as, Coffea Arabica, Coffea canephora, Coffea occidentalis, and Coffea Liberica.  The white, fragrant flowers grow in clusters at the root of the leaves, and the fruit is a red or purple cherrylike drupe, with sweet pulp, usually containing two pyrenes, commercially called “beans” or “berries”.
 3. The beverage made by decoction of the roasted and ground berry of the coffee tree.
    They have in Turkey a drink called coffee.  . . . This drink comforteth the brain and heart, and helpeth digestion.   --Bacon.
 Note: ☞ The use of coffee is said to have been introduced into England about 1650, when coffeehouses were opened in Oxford and London.
 Coffee bug Zool., a species of scale insect (Lecanium coffæa), often very injurious to the coffee tree.
 Coffee rat Zool. See Musang.

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