Volume 2

Useful knowledge: or a familiar account of the various productions of nature, mineral, vegetable, and animal, which are chiefly employed for the use of man. Illustrated with numerous figures, and intended as a work both of instruction and reference / By William Bingley.

  • Bingley, William, 1774-1823.
Date:
1821
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Useful knowledge: or a familiar account of the various productions of nature, mineral, vegetable, and animal, which are chiefly employed for the use of man. Illustrated with numerous figures, and intended as a work both of instruction and reference / By William Bingley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    144/322 (page 120)
    ALLIGATOR PEAR. us that they may thus be used not only with safety, but even with advantage*as assisting digestion. The berries or fruit of the bay tree, which have an aromatic smell, and a warm, bitterish, and pungent taste, were much used by the ancient Romans for culinary purposes. We import them chiefly from the coasls of the Mediterranean. From the berries, in a recent state, the people of Spain and Italy obtain, by pressure, a green aromatic oil, which is employed in medicine, externally, as a stimulant in nervous, para- lytic, and other disorders. 131. The ALLIGATOR FEAR is a pear-shaped fruit, produced by a species qf bav tree (Laurus persea), thut is uiuch cultivated in the West Indies. This tree, winch is an evergreen, has a straight stem, and grazes tu a considerable height, lis leaves are. somewhat oval, leuthery, transversely veined, and of beautiful green colour ; und the Jiowers grow in bunches. To the inhabitants of the West Indian islands, par- ticularly the negroes, this fruit, which ripens in the months of August and September, is an agreeable, and in some respects, an important article of diet. When ripe the pulp is of yellow colour, of consistence some- what harder than that of butter, and, in taste, not much unlike marrow. The negroes frequently make their meals of these pears, a little salt, and plantains ; and they are occasionally served up at the tables of the white people as fruit. Their exterior surface is covered with a green skin ; and in the centre there is a large round seed or stone, extremely hard and woody, with an uneven surface. This stone is used for the marking of linen. The cloth is held or tied over the stone; and the letters are pricked by a needle, through the cloth, into the outer covering of the stone. By this means it is stained of an indelible reddish brown colour, in the direction along which the needle has passed. The leaves are used by the negroes medicinally.