540 ORD. XXIX. Hesperidee. cARyYOPHYLLUS AROMATICUS. 
To bring this tree to the highest perfection, a peculiar mode of 
cultivation seems necessary, and is practised in Amboina by the 
Dutch, by whom it is kept a profound secret.‘ If the Clove was 
known to the Greeks, it cannot be discovered by their writings, 
nor is there any distinct account of it given by Pliny; but it seems 
in some measure applicable to the description of the Carunfel 
of Serapion, and the Charumfel Bellun of Avicenna,‘ so that this 
spice, as well as the nutmeg, was probably known to the Arabians. 
The spice used here, and known by the name of Cloves, is the 
unex panded flowers or rather calyces, which are found to be more 
aromatic than in their advanced state; they are of a dark brown 
colour, which they acquire from the smoke to which they are 
-exposed; for in order to preserve the Cloves it is customary first 
to immerse them in boiling water, and then subject them to 
fumigation, or merely to fumigate them, and afterwards expose 
them to the sun for further exsication. 
The Clove has a strong agreeable smell, and a bitterish hot not 
very pungent taste: these qualities are completely extracted by 
rectified spirit. After inspissating the filtered tincture, the re- 
maining extract has little smell, but its taste is excessively hot and 
fiery. Cloves impregnate water more strongly with their smell 
than they do spirit, but not near so much with their taste; and in 
distillation with water they yield one-sixth of their weight of 
essential oil, smelling strongly of the Cloves, but less pungent 
than the spirituous extract. — 
“ The oil of Cloves commonly met with in the shops, and 
received from the Dutch, is indeed highly acrimonious: but this 
vil is plainly not the genuine distilled oil of Cloves, but con- 
siderably more pungent, containing half its weight of an insipid 
expressed oil: it is probably from an admixture of the resinous 
part of the Clove that this sophisticated oil receives both its 
acrimony and high colour.’ 
¢ Rumph, & ¢ - * Vide J. Bauh. Hist. vol. i. p. 426, 
* Lewis, M. M. p. 203, ? 
