86 



On the Esculent Egg Plants. 



branches and the production of spines ; it does not appear to 

 differ materially from that variety either in the form or tex- 

 ture of its leaves. The flowers are also large, and pale 

 purple, with a spiny calyx. The fruit is oblong, somewhat 

 club-shaped, from five to eight inches in length, sometimes 

 straight, but generally slightly bent ; when mature, of a deep 

 purple ; but it is subject to more differences of colour than 

 the Round kind, being sometimes pale purple slightly striped, 

 and often much variegated with longitudinal yellowish stripes, 

 and is always more deeply coloured on the exposed side. 

 Miller's two plants, which he calls Melongena tereta and 

 Melongena incurva, seem both referable to this variety, dif- 

 fering in little else than in the straightness or incurvation of 

 the fruit. 



In the East Indies, other varieties than these two are said 

 to exist, in proof of which, eight pacquets of seeds of Brinjalls 

 were received by the Society from James Morley, Esq. of 

 Bombay, in 1821, and were labelled as so many different 

 varieties. These were all sown after they were received, and 

 have been subsequently tried, but though plants of each were 

 raised, exhibiting some appearances of variation in the foliage, 

 yet fruit was obtained from only two of them, and they agreed 

 with the varieties above described. It is supposed, from the 

 difficulty which has occurred in getting produce from the 

 others, that they require the temperature of a tropical country 

 to bring them to that state in which they would be useful, 

 and that perhaps the two kinds I have described are all that 

 can be expected to arrive at perfection with us. 



