364 SPICES 



CHAP. 



gardens in their houses." He mentions it also every- 

 where in the Moluccas and in Calicut. 



Both Capsicum minimum, the bird's-eye pepper, 

 and C. annuum, are figured by Garcia, who mentions a 

 yellowish-coloured variety cultivated at Lisbon. 



C. annuum was cultivated in England by Gerarde 

 in 1597, and it was at that time sold in the shops at 

 Billingsgate under the name of ginnie pepper. 



By this time it appears to have been well distributed 

 all over the warmer parts of the world, and a consider- 

 able number of varieties have since been established, 

 varying in size and form of fruit, and in colour, black, 

 purple, red, yellow, or white. 



NAMES 



The name capsicum (/ca^i/cov) was first used by 

 Actuarius, a Greek writer of the eleventh century, but 

 it is obvious that it could not have signified the plant 

 now known by this name, as it was not then discovered. 

 Fuchs, in 1542, called it Siliquastrum, or Calicut pepper. 

 Clusius seems to have first called it capsicum, and it 

 was also called, in the sixteenth century, Indian pepper 

 and Guinea pepper. The French call it still Poivre 

 d'Inde or Poivre de Guinee, but more commonly Piment 

 or Piment de Cayenne ; the Germans, Spanischer 

 Pfeffer. In English, it is known as Pod Pepper, Red 

 Pepper, Chilies, or Capsicum. The only original native 

 names for the spice are " Agi," in Spanish America, and 

 " Quija " or " Quiya " in Brazil (Piso and Marcgraf). 



In Eastern Asia there are no original native names, 

 all being compounds of the local word for pepper, with 

 some qualifying word signifying some locality from 

 which it was derived, or its colour, such as Gawai mirchi 

 (Goa pepper) in Bombay, Lada merah (Red pepper) 

 or Lada China (Chinese pepper) in Malay, showing 

 clearly that it was only known to the Asiatics as an 

 introduction. 



