4H B R O 
B.ROM'BERG, or Bidg oschtsch, a town of Poland, 
in the palatinate oi Inowrodaw : forty miles north of Inow. 
rollaw. 
BROME (Adam de), a great favourite of Edward II. 
who made him keeper of his feal, and chancellor of the 
bifhopric of Durham, in its vacancy, archdeacon of Stow, 
and ininifter of St. Mary’s in Oxford, where he indituted 
a college of (Indents in theology and logic, by the king’s 
licence, of which he . became maker. It is now called 
Oriel-college. He endowed it with the church of Coleby 
in Lincolnlhire, and a moiety of the church of Skintonin 
the diocefe of Richfield. He died in 1332, and was buried 
in the north aide of St. Mary’s church, where he was mi- 
niller. He had a (lone monument erected over him, but 
time has demoliflied it. 
BROME (Alexander), an author who flouridied in the 
reign of Charles I. and was an attorney in the' lord mayor 
of London’s court. He was born in 1620, and died Sep¬ 
tember 2, 1(66 ; Co that he lived through the whole of the 
civil wars and the proteClordiip, and died during the great 
fire of London. He was author of innumerable odes, Con- 
nets, and little pieces, in which the republicans are treat¬ 
ed with kee'nnefs and (everity. Thefe, with his epidles 
and epigrams, were all printed in one volume 8vo. after 
the redoration. He publifhed alfo a verfion of Horace, by 
hiinfelf and others; and a comedy called the Cunning Lo¬ 
vers, r 6 j 1. . 
BROME (Richard), a dramatic writer in the reign of 
Charles I. cotemporary with Decker, Ford, Shirley, &c. 
He was originally no better than a menial fervant of Ben 
Jorifpn. He w rote himfelf, however, into high repute 
His genius was entirely turned to comedy, and we have 
fifteen of his productions in this way remaining. 1 liey 
were ailed in their day with great applaufe, and have been 
often revived fince. Even in our ow n time, one of them, 
called the Jovial Crew', has, with little alteration, been 
exhibited at Covent Garden with great and repeated fuc- 
cefs. He died in 16 52. 
BROME, a town of Germany, in the circle of Lower 
Saxony,‘and.principality of Luneberg : 33. miles E. Zell. 
BROME-GRASS, /. in botany. See. Bro mu’s. 
BRO'MEL (Olaus), was born in 1639,-at Oerebro, 
where his father carried on trade. He (tudied pliyfic at 
Upfal, difputed there in 1667 de pleuritide , and in 1668 
taught botany at Stockholm. In 1672 he was phydcian 
to the eiiibafjy to England, and afterwards to that of Hol¬ 
land, w here, in r673, he received the degree of doctor at 
I.eyden, and wrote a dillertation de lumbricis. On his re¬ 
turn to his native country, in 1674, he became a member 
bf the college of phydcians at Stockholm; but in 1691 he 
was city phydcian to Cfottenburg, and provincial phylicikn 
in Elfsburg and Bahus-Lan, in which fituation he died in 
the year 1.705. His botanical writings are, Lupologia, 
and Chloris Gothica. His fon, Magnus von Bromel, is 
the author of Lithographia Suecana. 
HROME'L 1 A, /. [fo'called in memory of Olaus Bromel, 
aSwede, the lubject of the preceding article.] The Ana¬ 
nas, o,r Pine-Apf le. In botany, a genus of the clafs 
hexandria, order monogynia, natural order coronariae. 
The generic characters are—Calyx : perianthium three- 
cornered, (mall, fuperior, permanent ; divifions three, 
ovate. Corolla : petals three, narrow, lanceolate, ereCt, 
longer than the calyx ; neClary fadened to each petal above 
the bale, converging. Stamina: filaments fix, fubulate, 
fhorter than the corolla, inferted into the receptacle ; an- 
ther.x ereCt, fagitlate. Pidillum : germ inferior; fiyle 
fimple, filiform, the length of the damens; digma obtule, 
trifid. Pericarpium: berry roiindifh, umbilicate, one or 
three cejled. Seeds: numerous, incumbent, fomewhat 
oblong, obtufe.— EJJential Chara&cr. Calyx, trihd, (tipe- 
rior. Petals, three, and a neftareous Icale at 1 he bafe of 
each. Berry, three-celled. 
Defer ip tion. Thefe are herbaceous plants, and fome of 
them parifitical; the root-leaves are channelled, and m,od- 
ly toothed and fpiny about the edge. Plumier and otliers 
BRO 
have d-.parated this genus into three, and in that have been 
followed by Mr. Miller, who treats of it under three'ie- 
parate articles, Ananas, Bromelia, and Karatas. The ori¬ 
ginal bromelias of Plumier have the flowers on a loofe 
(pike or panicle, on a fcape or fta.lk, and the fruits can 
hardly be called berries. In the-karatas, the flowers are 
in a clofe radical corymb, and the fruits are ovate berries. 
The flowers of the ananas are in a clofe fpike on a fcape 
which is leafy at top ; as the fpike ripens, it takes the form 
of a flefliy fcaly drobile, vulgarly called the fruit, and 
.compofed of many coadunate berries, which have fcarcely 
any cells, or feeds. 
No great (kill in botanical phy flognomy was necedary to 
difeover the excellence of the ananas. It recommended 
itfelf fo ihuch by its fade, fmell, and colour., as.to at¬ 
tract the notice of the fird Europeans who vifited Brafil; 
and we find it praifed in the earlied writers on America, 
who give an account of it, as well as tobacco, maize, and 
other productions of the new world. Gonfalo Hernandez 
de Oviedo is, we believe, the fird perlon who deferibed 
and delineated the ananas. This author was- born at Ma¬ 
drid, in 1478 ; went to America in 1513, and in 1535 was 
governor of St. Domingo. In the lad-mentioned year, his 
General Hidory of America was printed at Seville. At 
■that time three kinds were known, which in America were 
called yayama, boniama, and yayagua, but by the Spaniards 
pinas. Attempts had then been made to fend tlie fruit to 
Spain by pulling it before it was ripe.; but it had always 
become fpoiled in the cotirfe of the voyage. Oviedo had 
tried alfo to fend dips or young (hoots to Europe, but thefe 
alfo died by the way. He, however, entertained hopes 
that means would be found to rear the ananas in Spain, in 
which maize or Turkidi corn had been brought to matu¬ 
rity, provided it could be tranfported with Tufficient ex¬ 
pedition. Geronimo Benzono, a Milanefe, who redded 
in Mexfco from 1541 to 1555, caufed, on his return, his 
Hidory of the New World to be printed, for tire fird time, 
at Venice, in 1568. In this work he highly extols (he 
pinas ;.and fays, he believes that no fruit on the earth can 
be more pleafant: dek perfons, who loathed all other 
food, might relith it. After him, Andrew Thevet, a 
French monk, who was in Brafil from 1555 to 15 56,. de¬ 
feribed and delineated this plant under the name of nanas. 
The art of prelerving the fruit with (tigar was at that 
time known. John de Leary, who went to Brafil in 1557 
as chaplain to a Huguenot colony, in the account of his 
voyage firfi ufed thflGcord ananas, which probably took its 
rile from the nanas of Thevet.. In the middle of the fix- 
teenth century, Franc. Hernandes, a naturalid, undertook 
an expenfive, and alinod ulelefs, voyage to Mexico. It 
cod Philip II. king of Spain 60,000 ducats, and the ob- 
fervations he colleCfed, for which, at the time Acoda was 
in America, 1200 figures were ready, were never com¬ 
pletely printed ; and in what are printed one can fcarcely 
didlnguidt thofe of the original author from the additions 
of (Irangers. He has, however, given a fomewhat better 
figure of the ananas, w hich he calls matzatli, or pinca Indica. 
Chridopher Acoda, in his treatife of the drugs and me¬ 
dicines of the.Ead Indies, printed in 1578, calls this plant 
the ananas. He fays it was brought from Santa Cruz to 
the Wed Indies, and that it was afterwards tranfplanted 
to the Ead Indies and China, where it was, at that time, 
common. The latter part of this atcount is confirmed by 
J. Hugo de Linfchotten, who was in the Ead Indies from 
1594 to 1595. Attempts were very early made, as Oviedo 
allures us, to tranfplant the ananas into Europe; and, as 
in the beginning of the feventeentb century it was reckon¬ 
ed among the marks of royal magnificence to have orange- 
trees in expenfive hot-houfes, it was hoped that this fruit 
could be brought to maturity alfo in the artificial climate 
of the(e buildings. Thefe attempts, however, wereevery 
where uniuccefsful; no fruit was produced, or the fruit 
did not ripen, becaufe, perhaps, this favourite exotic was 
treated with too much care. It is not certainly known 
who in Europe fin d had the pleafure of feeing ananas ri- 
3 . pen 
