48 COMMON MELON OR PAPAW TREE. 
a somewhat solid consistence towards the base. The 
leaves are on petioles which are near upon 2 feet long, they 
are deeply divided into 7 or 9 sinuated gashed lobes. The 
flowers are axillary, yellowish- white and fragrant; the 
barren ones in pendulous racemes with the flowers dis- 
posed in corymbose clusters ; the fertile flowers are rather 
numerous, on short usually simple thickened pedicels. 
The fruit, produced throughout the whole year, is about the 
size of a small musk-melon, usually oval or round, and fre- 
quently grooved; it is yellow, inclining to orange when 
ripe, containing a bright yellow, succulent, sweet pulp, with 
an aromatic scent ; the seeds a little larger than those of 
mustard, have a w^arm taste almost like that of Cresses. 
The fruit of the Papaw when boiled and mixed with 
lime juice, is esteemed a wholesome sauce to fresh meat, 
in taste not much unlike apples. It is likewise employed 
as a pickle, when about half-grown, being previously soaked 
in salt water to get rid of the milky juice it contains, and 
is, when ripe, frequently preserved in sugar and sent to 
Europe with other tropical sweetmeats. The juice of the 
unripe fruit, as well as that of the seed, acts as a powerful 
and efficacious vermifuge, and its chief constituent, sin- 
gular enough, is found to be Jibrine , a principle otherwise 
peculiar to the animal kingdom and the fungi.* An appli- 
cation of the milky sap is said to be a remedy for the 
tetter or ringworm, and upon the coast of Malaquette in 
Africa, the leaves are employed as an abstergent in place 
of soap, they are also used for the same purpose, by the 
African creoles of the West Indies. 
The Papaw, moreover, has the singular property of ren- 
dering the toughest animal substances tender, by causing 
a separation of the muscular fibre ; even its vapour alone 
is said to produce this effect upon meat suspended among 
* Thompson’s Annals of Chemistry, I. c. 
