TOMATO. 699 
solvent of speech. Marry! as the friendly vapour ascended, 
how his prattle would curl up sometimes with it! The ligaments 
which tongue-tied him were loosened, ‘and the stammerer 
proceeded a statist.” 
TOMATO. 
Lycopersicum (“ Wolf’s Peach”) is the significant name of the 
passion-rousing Tomato, a native of South America, bearing 
fruit of a peculiar subacid flavour, wihch is anti-scorbutic, whilst 
somewhat laxative, and nutritious, except for gouty persons. 
Of such extensive use as a vegetable food is the Tomato nowadays 
by all classes, that it needs no literary description here. The 
succulent, brilliantly red, polished, furrowed, attractive fruit 
is familiar in every greengrocer’s window, and on many a 
huckster’s stall of green-stuff, especially in crowded streets, 
for purchase by working people. Much of the favour which has 
become attached to this ruddy vegetable production is due to a 
widespread impression that it is good for the liver, and corrective 
of biliary disorders. At first the Tomato fruit was known as 
“ Mala Athiopica,” or the “ Apple of the moors,” which therefore 
bore an Italian designation, “ Pomei dei mori.” This name was 
presently perverted in French to ‘‘ Pommes d'amour,” and thence 
in English to ‘‘ Love-apple.” In the United States of America 
until about the year 1830 the Tomato was known only as a 
curiosity. Chemically the Tomato (or Love-apple) contains 
citric, and malic acids; also it further possesses oxalic acid, or 
oxalate of potash, in common with our sorrel (wild, and cultivated), 
and the rhubarb of our kitchen gardens. As already explained 
when describing these latter vegetables, they are ill-suited on 
this account for persons of gouty tendencies, and who are 
disposed to the formation of worrying oxalates of lime in the 
blood. Equally so is the Tomato by reason of its oxalic 
attributes; otherwise there are special qualities in Tomatoes 
which make them of purifying value as food. The shrub which 
bears this fruit contains sulphur largely, of which the Tomatoes 
partake. But nothing exists of the two poisonous alkaloids— 
atropine, and solanine (both contained by the stem, and leaves) 
—in the fruit. The best Tomatoes are supposed to grow within 
sight, or smell of the sea. A gardener’s hands, when training 
the plants, become covered with the clammy, greenish moisture 
thereof, which dries on them in successive coats; when the 
