CAPER. 
and the branches, and are smooth, round, and 
entire; and the flowers are produced on long 
footstalks at the intermediate joints between the 
branches, and have five large, white, rounded, 
concave, expanded petals, a great number of long 
stamina, and a style rising from among the sta- 
mina, and above them, and crowned with an 
oval germen, which becomes a capsule, filled with 
kidney-shaped seeds. The bark of the root is 
sometimes employed in medicine; it is supposed 
to possess discussive and splenic properties, and 
to be useful in gout ; and it has an exceedingly 
disagreeable sharp taste, and an equally disagree- 
able mode of action. But its flower-buds, gath- 
ered while undeveloped or rotund like seeds, and 
immediately thrown into vinegar for preserva- 
tion, form the grand feature of value, and have, 
since at least the times of the ancient Greeks, 
been regarded by almost all gourmands as an ex- 
ceedingly delicate and quite inimitable pickle. 
This species is cultivated in Spain, Italy, Sicily, 
and the south and centre of France, for supply- 
| ing the market with capers ; and it requires little 
| care,and is of very easy management. In autumn, 
the stems of the plants are cut down to within 
six inches of the ground, and are covered all over 
| with soil from the intermediate spaces; and, in 
spring, they are uncovered and trimmed, and are 
dressed or earthed up with soil to the points at 
which the new shoots are likely to be produced. 
In the latter part of spring, they begin to bear 
flower buds ; and during the whole season till the 
restraining of the flow of sap, or throughout a 
period of about six months, they continue to yield 
an unintermitted series of buds. A gathering of 
buds is made every morning, and immediately 
thrown into a tub of vinegar; gathering after 
| gathering, throughout the season, is thrown into 
| the same tub; and a little common salt is dis- 
solved in the vinegar in order to prevent bad 
effects from a diluting of it with the watery por- 
tion of the buds. At the end of the season, caper 
merchants, who travel through the country for 
the purpose, purchase the accumulations of gath- 
erings in the tubs, and, partly by sifting them 
through sieves, partly by testing the quality of 
the vinegar, divide them into sorts. The smallest 
are the most highly esteemed; the next in size 
are next in esteem; three other sizes are of gra- 
dually decreasing value ; and all the five sizes are 
completely separated from one another, disposed 
for sale in five distinct sets of bottles, jars, and 
barrels, and named respectively the nonpareille, 
the capucine, the capote, the secondes and the 
tierces. 
When a weak or inferior vinegar is used in the 
pickling of the capers, the contents of a bottle of 
them, on being exposed to an influx of fresh air, 
are speedily decomposed, and pass into a gelatin- 
ous substance, containing a large proportion of 
the peculiar proximate element, which often 
abounds in breweries, and which has received 
the name of nanceic acid.—The sieves of the 
CAPERCAILZIE. 681 
caper merchants in the south of Europe are made 
wholly of copper and copper-wire; they deliver 
up a proportion of their substance into combina- 
tion with vinegar to form acetate of copper ; and 
this poisonous salt, whenever in any considerable | 
quantity, tinges the capers with a green colour, | 
and causes the violent pains in the stomach and 
bowels with which caper-eaters are often afflicted. 
The absurd preference which connoisseurs give 
to green capers, is based on profound ignorance 
of this fact, and occasions the noxious kinds of 
capers to be selected, and the innocuous kinds to 
be depreciated or rejected. As sugar so far de- 
composes salts of copper as to destroy their poi- 
sonous qualities, a proportion of it ought to be 
added to the sauce of all capers which have any | 
tinge of greenish colour. 
The common caper-bush, though usually treated 
as a hothouse plant in Great Britain, is believed 
to be capable of cultivation in the open ground | 
in the south of England. Some seeds experimen- 
tally sown at Camden House succeeded better in 
the open rubbish of a wall than in a hotbed, and 
even stood uninjuredly over the winter without 
shelter. ‘The second year,” says the experi- 
menter, “those plants in the walls made shoots 
of a foot in length ; while those in the pots hardly 
added two inches to their height. The third 
year, in April, I cut the shoots of the foregoing 
summer from the plants that were abroad, leav- 
ing only a bud or two of each near the original 
stem, which the same summer made shoots nearly 
three feet long, to the number of about forty 
upon each plant, and put out buds for blossoms ; 
but the plants in the pots did not advance above 
two inches. In short, the last year, one single 
plant in the wall had not less than a quart of 
blossom buds upon it fit to pickle, and the plant 
perfected some of its fruit. Thus, if the plant be | 
headed down in the spring like a willow, it will - 
every summer make a beautiful bush, and afford | 
as good capers as grow in Italy.”—The ovate spe- 
cles, O. ovata or Fontanesii, is very similar, in 
height, habit, and native country, to the common 
species, and is almost quite hardy in England. 
Several species formerly included in the genus | 
Capparis, are now assigned to the genera niebuh- 
ria, cratzeva, morrisonia, and stephania.—brad- | 
ley's Works of Nature—The Gardener’s Gazette.— | 
The Magazine of Domestic Heonomy.— Miller's | 
Gardener's Dictionary —Loudon’s Encyclopedia of — 
Plants —Loudon’s Hortus Britannicus. 
CAPERCAILZIE, — scientifically Zetrao Uro- 
gallus. 
birds. It is also called capercaillie, capercale, 
capecali, cock of the woods, and cock of the 
mountain. It abounds in Sweden, Norway, north- 
ern Asia, and some parts of Russia, Germany, and 
Hungary ; and is somewhat abundantly supplied 
from the sea-board of the Baltic to the market of 
London. It formerly abounded in the Highlands 
of Scotland, and in some parts of Ireland, but 
was exterminated, partly from rapacious pursuit 
— 
| 
The largest species of the grouse tribe of | 
