A lecture on the geography of plants / By John Barton.

  • John Barton
Date:
1827
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A lecture on the geography of plants / By John Barton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    97/120 (page 83)
    S3 and Java. The sweet-smelling resin called gum benzoin is the produce of a large tree * growing in many parts of the East Indies. Tamarinds are the produce of a treed growing also in the East Indies, as well as in Egypt, Arabia, and the West Indies. It rises to a great height, and produces handsome clusters of yellow dowers, streaked with red veins. The fruit, after being taken out of the pods in which it grows, is placed in layers in a cask, and boiling syrup poured over it till the cask is filled, form- ing an agreeable conserve, which is sometimes employed in medicine. Of the spice-bearing trees and plants, a large proportion are natives of India and the East Indian islands: the only considerable exception, perhaps, is allspice, or pimento, the fruit of a tall, handsome, and fragrant species of myrtle J, growing wild in the West Indies. The spices of India formed principal articles in that lucra- tive trade which once enriched successively the Italian republics, the Portuguese, and the Dutch. Before the discovery of the passage round the Cape of Good Hope, these commo- dities were brought to Europe either by a long and expensive land-carriage, or by way of the * Sty rax benzoe. -j* Tarnarindus indica. $ Myrtus pimenta.