July 1, 1865.] THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



PEPPER. 551 



in the customs returns, are all classed under the head " pepper," so that it 

 is difficult to tell the exact amount of true pepper imported ; but in 

 a botanical sense, pepper is known as the product of one plant only, 

 and that the Piper nigrum. To show the importance of this article in 

 British commerce, as well as the large revenues it brings to the Treasury, 

 we cannot do better than briefly trace the history and development of 

 the pepper trade. It seems pretty clear that its uses were well known 

 to the ancient Greeks ; as a medicine it was also early known, being 

 employed as such by Hippocrates. We quote the following interesting 

 paragraph from Simmonds's ' Commercial Products of the Vegetable 

 Kingdom ' : — " Pliny, the naturalist, states that the price of pepper in 

 the market of Pome in his time was, in English money, 9s. 4d. per 

 pound, and thus -we have the price of pepper at least 1,774 years ago. 

 The pepper alluded to must have been the produce of Malabar, the 

 nearest part of India to Europe that produced the article, and its prime 

 cost could not have exceeded the present one, or about 2d. per pound. 

 It would most probably have come to Europe by crossing the Indian 

 and Arabian Ocean with the easterly monsoon, sailing up the Red Sea, 

 crossing the Desert, dropping down the Nile, and making its way along 

 the Mediterranean by two-thirds of its whole length. This voyage, 

 which in our time can be performed in a month, most probably then 

 took eighteen. Transit and customs' duties must have been paid over 

 and over again, and there must have been plenty of extortion. All 

 this will explain how pepper could not be sold in the Poman market 

 under fifty-six times its prime cost. Immediately previous to the 

 discovery of the route to India by the Cape of Good Hope, we find 

 that the price of pepper in the markets of Europe had fallen to 6s. a 

 pound, or 3s. 4d. less than in the time of Pliny. What probably 

 contributed to this fall was the superior skill in navigation of the now 

 converted Arabs, and the extension to the* islands of the Eastern 

 Archipelago, which abounded in pepper. After the great discovery of 

 Vasco de Gama, the price of pepper fell to about Is. 3d. a pound, a fall 

 of 8s. Id. from the time of Pliny, and of 4s. 9d. from that of the 

 Mahomedan Arabs, Turks, and Venetians." The pepper plant {Piper 

 nigrum, L.), is a native of the Coast of Malabar and the southern parts 

 of India, but is now largely cultivated in the East and West Indies, 

 Sumatra, Borneo, Siam, and other places within the tropics. It is a 

 perennial with a climbing, shrubby stem ; the berries or fruit are borne 

 upon a spadix that is arranged in dense clusters round a central stalk, 

 each of these spadices contain from twenty to fifty berries. The 

 propagation of the pepper plant is chiefly by cutting, though they will 

 grow well from seed, but of course the plants r take longer time before 

 they come into bearing, which is a great consideration when pecuniary 

 profit is the aim. The richer the soil the better the plants thrive. In 

 forming a plantation, the grower will take his cuttings and plant 

 them perhaps from seven to twelve feet apart. The climbing habit of 

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