PART ir.

Materia Medica.

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gum resin ; but it is equally bitter, and is perhaps not differentFrom a diminished dose of the myrrh.

Officinal preparations. Tinctura Myrrhce L. E. D. TincturaAloes et Myrrhce. E. Pilules Aloes cum Myrrha. L. E. D. PilidaFerri cum Myrrha. L.

MYRTUS. Spec. Plant. Willi, ii. 967.CI. 12. Ord. 1. Icosandria Monogynia Nat. ord. Hesperideae Linn.

Myrti Juss.G. 973. Calyx five-cleft, superior. Petals five. Berry two or three-celled, many seeded.Species 28. Myrtus Pimenta. Pimenta, or All-spice tree. Med.

Bot. 2d.ed. 541. *. 194.Officinal. Pimento; bacce. Lond. Myrtje Pimento fructus

Edin. Pimento ; [Piper Jamaicense) Bacce. Dub. Pimenta

Berries. Jamaica Pepper.

Syn. Poivre de Jamaique (F.) Nelhenpfeffer (G.) Piraenti (1.) Pimienta [S.)

Tliis tree is a native of South America and the West Indiaislands. It grows in great plenty on the hilly parts, on thenorth side of the island of Jamaica; flowering in June, July,and August, and soon afterwards ripening its fruit. It is ahandsome tree, rising in height about thirty feet, straight,branching, and covered with a very smooth gray bark. Theleaves, which are supported on footstalks at the ends of thetwigs, are elliptical, pointed, of different sizes, but the largestfive inches long, and two broad in the middle, smooth, thin,entire, shining, and of a deep green colour; the flowers areproduced in terminal bunches, or rather trichotomouS pani-cles : the calyx is four-cleft; the petals four, reflected, of apale green colour, inclosing many longer spreading filamentsof the same colour, supporting pale yellow roundish anthers:the fruit is a spherical berry, crowned with the persistent ca-lyx ; when ripe black, or dark purple, smooth, shining, andbilocular, with the seeds enveloped in a moist, green, pungent,aromatic pulp. *

The fruit, which is the part of this plant medicinally used,is gathered before it is ripe ', and exposed to the sun for manydays, spread thin upon cloths. They require to be frequentlyturned, and carefully preserved from the dews. By degrees,under this management, they become wrinkled, and changefrom green to a brown colour; after which they are packed inbags and hogsheads for the European market. The more fra-grant and smaller they are, the better they are accounted. s

Qualities. —Pimenta has an aromatic, agreeable odour, re-sembling that of a mixture of cinnamon, cloves, and nutmegs,with the warm pungent taste of the cloves; qualities which

1 Sloane, Phil. Trans, xvii. 462.

* When the berries ripen, they lose much of ihe aromatic warmih for which they areesteemed, and acquire a taste similar to that of juniper berries. 3 Sloane, I, c.

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