781 



CARICA. 



CARINARIA. 



782 



speaking pepo, rests suspended upon the leafless part of the trunk, 

 much in the same way as that of the^l rtocarpus, or Bread-Fruit. The 

 surface, when the fruit is ripe, is a pale and rather dingy orange- 

 yellow, obscurely furrowed, and often rough with little elevated 

 points. The flesh is very thick, coloured, but paler than the outside, 

 and there passes through it longitudinally five bundles of vessels. In 

 the centre is a considerable cavity, with five longitudinal ridges, and 

 these are thickly clothed with numerous seeds." This fruit is called 

 the Papaw, ami ia accounted of considerable interest in the tropical 

 part of the world. An excellent history of its uses is compiled in the 

 work already quoted, from which we borrow the following : " The 

 papaw-tree is of rapid growth. St. Pierre probably spoke from his 

 own knowledge when he described Virginia as having planted a seed 

 which in three years' time produced a trunk 20 feet high, with its 

 upper part loaded with ripe fruit. It is for the sake of this fruit 

 mainly that the plant is cultivated ; but if the flavour were not better 

 than that yielded by what ripened in our stove, I cannot recommend 

 it as at all agreeable." Brown, in his ' Natural History of Jamaica,' 

 tells us that " it has a pleasant sweetish taste, and is much liked by 

 many people ; that while young it is commonly used for sauce ; and 

 when boiled and mixed with lime-juice and sugar is not unlike or 

 much inferior to that made of real apples, for which it is commonly sub- 

 stituted." In the opinion of Sloane it is not a very pleasant fruit, even 

 when helped with pepper and sugar ; and the' more ordinary use, he 

 adds, of this fruit is before it is ripe, when, as large as one's fist, it is 

 cut into slices, soaked in water till the milky juice is out, and then 

 boiled and eaten as turnips or baked as apples. The juice of the pulp, 

 according to Descourtilz, in the ' Flore Mddicale des Antilles,' is used 

 as a cosmetic to remove freckles on the skin caused by the sun ; and 

 the negroes in the French colonies employ the leaves to wash their 

 linen, instead of soap. As a medicinal plant the Papaw-Tree is parti- 

 cularly deserving of notice. Hernandez long ago spoko of the milky 

 juice of the unripe fruit as a powerful vermifuge, which has been con- 

 firmed by M. Charpentier Cossigni, as mentioned in the ' Asiatic 

 Researches ' by Dr. Fleming (vol. ii. p. 162). A single dose, that gen- 

 tleman says, is sufficient to cure the disease however abundant the 

 worms may be. Another French writer (Poupe'e Desportes) recom- 

 mends the use of the seed instead of the juice. But the most extra- 

 ordinary property of the Papaw-Tree is that which is related, first I 

 believe by Brown, in his ' Natural History of Jamaica,' namely, that 

 " water impregnated with the milky juice of this tree is thought to 

 make all sorts of meat washed in it very tender ; but eight or ten 

 minutes steeping, it is said, will make it so soft that it will drop in 

 pieces from the spit before it is well roasted or turn soon to rags in 

 the boiling." Mr. Neill mentioned this circumstance more fully in his 

 interesting 'Horticultural Tour through Holland and the Nether- 

 lands ; ' and it has repeatedly been confirmed to me by gentlemen of 

 this country who have been long resident in the West Indies, and who 

 speak of the employment of the juice for such a purpose as of quite a 

 general occurrence ; and more, that old hogs and old poultry which 

 are fed upon the leaves and fruit, however tough the meat they afford 

 might otherwise be, are thus rendered perfectly tender, and good too, 

 if eaten as soon as killed, but that the flesh very soon passes into a 

 state of putridity. The juice causes a separation of the muscular 

 fibres. Nay, the very vapour of the tree serves the purpose ; hence 

 many people suspend the joints of meat, fowls, &c. in the upper part 

 of the tree in order to prepare them for the table. Such is the effect 

 upon hogs that feed upon the fruit, that the good housewi ves reject the 

 flesh of such if it is destined for salting, well knowing that it is not 

 sufficiently firm for that purpose. 



" Whether this power of hastening the decay of meat be attri- 

 butable to the animal matter or fibrine contained in the juice of the 

 Papaw or not, I will not pretend to say ; but the presence of such 

 is a fact scarcely less wonderful than the property just alluded to. 

 Two specimens of the juice were brought from the Isle of France ; 

 in the one it had been evaporated to dryness, and was in the state of 

 an extract ; in the other the juice was preserved by being mixed with 

 an equal bulk of rum. Both were subjected to analysis by Vauquelin. 

 The first was of a yellowish-white colour and semi-transparent. Its 

 taste was sweetish. It had no smell, and was pretty solid; but 

 attracted moisture when kept in a damp place. The second was 

 reddish-brown, and had the smell and taste of boiled beef. When 

 the first specimen was macerated in cold water the greatest part of it 

 dissolved ; the solution frothed with soap. The addition of nitric 

 - acid coagulated it, and rendered it white ; and when boiled it threw 

 down abundance of white flakes. When the juice of the Papaw is 

 treated with water the greatest part dissolves ; but there remains 

 a substance insoluble, which has a greasy appearance. It softens in 

 the air, and becomes viscid, brown, and semi-transparent. When 

 thrown on burning coals it melted, let drops of grease exude, emitted 

 the noise of meat roasting, and produced a smoke which had the 

 odour of fat volatilised. It left behind it no residue. The substance 

 was fibrine. The resemblance between the juice of the Papaw and 

 animal meat is so close that one would be tempted to suspect some 

 'ion, were not the evidence that it is really the juice of a tree 

 quite nnqnmtionable. This fibrine had been supposed previously to 

 belong exclusively to the animal kingdom ; but it has since beuii 

 found in other vegetables, especially in 



C. digitata, the Chambum, ia a Brazilian plant, and regarded with 

 little less honour than the Upas-Tree itself. PSppig says the juice 

 which spirted on his face when he cut into the tree only caused 

 itching in the face and a few blisters on the hands. The male flowers 

 have a very disgusting smell. 



CARINA, in Botany, the two oblique front petals of a Papiliona- 

 ceous flower, united by their contiguous edges into an organ having a 

 figure something like that of the keel of a boat. 



CARINA'RIA, the name of a genus of Mollusca, arranged by 

 Cuvier under his fifth order of Gasteropods (Lamarck's Hetei'opoda) 

 as the type of that order, and by De Blainville under the first family 

 (Nectopoda) of his order Nucleobmnc/data. The shells of this genus 

 were formerly known to collectors under the names of Venus's 

 Slipper and the Glass Nautilus : indeed one of the species is the 

 Argonauta vUretts of Gmelin. 



The body of the animal is sub-cylindrical, elongated, transparent, 

 dotted with elevated points, prolonged posteriorly, and furnished 

 towards the upper part of its posterior extremity with a sort of fin, 

 which performs the part of a rudder. A reddish thin compressed 

 sub-circular fin, beautifully reticulated by decussating muscular 

 fibres, furnished with a sort of acetabulum or sucker, rises from the 

 belly nearly opposite to the point on the back occupied by the shell, 

 With the aid of this fin it floats along. M. Verany says that, 

 notwithstanding the greatest possible attention, he has not been able 

 to discover the use of the sucker, or rather suctorial disc , in the 

 ventral fin ; but there can be little doubt that it is analogous to the 

 foot in Gasteropods, and that the animal avails itself of its powers of 

 adhesion by sticking to rocks or other submarine bodies, and thus 

 lying at anchor, as it were, in repose, with the frail shell that protects 

 the circulating and :-espiratory organs, together with the liver and 

 generative gland, lowermost the same position occupied by it when 

 the animal is in motion. 



The head is capable of contraction within the body, and is provided 

 with a sort of retractile proboscis. There are two tentacula of some 

 length and of a subconical shape, placed laterally at the insertion of 

 the head ; and there are two eyes situated at the base of the tentacula. 

 The mouth is furnished with a circular jaw, armed with four rows of 

 teeth, of which the two internal ones are fixed and small. 



The organs of respiration, together with the heart and vent, are 

 protected by a delicate transparent shell, somewhat compressed, 

 without a spire, but with a summit a little recurved backwards, and 

 the opening wide, entire, and oval. The vent is under the edge of 

 the mantle, which envelopes the organs above mentioned and lines 

 the shell. 



The sexes, according to M. Verany, are separated as in the Firohx 

 (Pterotracltea) ; the sexual organ of the male being placed a little 

 anteriorly on the right side under the subcircular belly-fin ; that of 

 the female is near the vent. 



The digestive organs consist of a retractile tube furnished within 

 with a horny rasp, and a short oesophagus, opening into a slightly 

 dilated stomach, which is continued into an intestinal tube passing 

 straight towards the shell, into which it enters, and making a convolu- 

 tion terminates in the vent. 



There is between the eyes a ganglion from which many nerves are 

 given off, and of these six are directed forwards and four backwards. 

 Of the six directed forwards two go towards the mouth, and appear 

 to provide for the action of the proboscis, two belong to the 

 tentacula, and two to the eyes. Of the four directed backwards, two 

 go directly to the nucleus in the shell, and the other two unite under 

 the fin, whence they ramify into five branches, three of which are 

 appropriated to the belly-fin, and two go towards the tail. 



Carinaria Afediterranea may be taken as an example of the genus. 

 M. Verany states that it is to be found all the year on the coasts (in 



Carinaria Mcditfrranea, male. 



a, Situation of the ganglion or brain ; 6, eye ; c, head ; d, retractile tube ; 

 /, digestive tube ; g, shell containing the organs of respiration, heart, &c. ; 

 A, the posterior or rudder-fin ; t, ventral-fin ; *, the sucker ; I, I, nerves. 

 The figure, with slight modification, is taken from Verany's. 

 the neighbourhood of Nice), but that it is sufficiently abundant in the 

 months of May, June, and July. He further observes that it is rare 

 to find it with the shell entire, that it feeds on gelatinous bodies and 

 on very small fishes, such as A tkerina nana (the Dwarf Atheriue), and 



