Page:EB1911 - Volume 19.djvu/958

 Nutmeg and mace are almost exclusively obtained from the Banda Islands, although the cultivation has been attempted with varying success in Singapore, Penang, Bengal, Réunion, Brazil, French Guiana and the West Indies. The trees yield fruit in eight years after sowing the seed, reach their prime in twenty-fIve years, and bear for sixty years or longer. Almost the whole surface of the Banda Islands is planted with nutmeg trees, which thrive under the shade of the lofty Canarium commune. In Bencoolen the tree bears all the year round, but the chief harvest takes place in the later months of the year, and a smaller one in April, May and June. The ripe fruit is about 2 in. in diameter, of a rounded pear-shape, and when mature splits into two, exposing a crimson arillus surrounding a single seed (figs. 1, 2). When the fruit is collected the pericarp is first removed, then the arillus is carefully stripped off and dried, in which state it forms the mace of commerce. The seed consists of a thin, hard testa or shell, enclosing a wrinkled kernel, which, when dried, is the nutmeg. The kernel consists mainly of the abundant endosperm, which is firm, whitish in colour and marbled with numerous reddish-brown vein-like partitions, into which the inner seedcoat penetrates, forming what is known botanically as ruminated endosperm. To prepare the nutmegs for use, the seed enclosing the kernel is dried at a gentle heat in a drying-house over a smouldering fire for about two months, the seeds being turned every second or third day. When thoroughly dried the shells are broken with a wooden mallet or flat board and the nutmegs picked out and sorted, the smaller and inferior ones being reserved for the expression of the fixed oil which they contain, and which forms the so-called oil of mace.

The dried nutmegs are then rubbed over with dry sifted lime. The process of liming, which originated at the time when the Dutch held a monopoly of the trade, was with the view of preventing the germination of the seeds, which were formerly immersed for three months in milk of lime for this purpose, and a preference is still manifested in some countries for nutmegs so prepared. It has, however, been shown that this treatment is by no means necessary, since exposure to the sun for a week destroys the vitality of the kernel. Penang nutmegs are never limed. The entire fruit preserved in syrup is used as a sweetmeat in the Dutch East Indies.

The name nutmeg is also applied to other fruits or seeds in different countries. The Jamaica or calabash nutmeg is derived from Monodora Myristica, the Brazilian from Cryptocarya moschata, the Peruvian from Laurelia sempervirens, the Madagascar or clove nutmeg from Agathophyllum aromaticum, and the Californian or stinking nutmeg from Torreya Myristica. The cotyledons of Nectandra Puchury were at one time offered in England as nutmegs.

NUTRITION. The physiology of nutrition involves the study of the way in which the tissues of the body, and more especially the great master tissues, muscle and nerve, obtain the material for growth and repair and the energy for mechanical work and heat production, and of the mode in which they get rid of the waste products of their activity. The study is therefore very largely a study of the history of the food of the body, since it is in the food that the necessary matter and energy are supplied. Under the composition and special importance of various foods and the laws which regulate the supply of food under different conditions of the body are separately dealt with. Here the mode of digestion, the utilization and the elimination of the end products of the three great constituents, proteins, carbohydrates and fats, are alone considered. They are treated under the following heads: I. The Chemistry of Digestion; II. The Mode of Formation of the Digestive Secretions; III. The Mechanism by which the Food is passed along the Alimentary Canal; IV. The Absorption of Food; V. Metabolism; VI. Excretion.

The essential step which prepares the ordinary food for utilization in the body, for the change into living matter, is digestion, a process which the food undergoes under the influence of the ferments or enzymes present in the gastro-intestinal tract. By this process it is broken down into simpler substances, which can be utilized by the body tissues for conversion into protoplasm and as the supply of energy. That part which is unsuited for use in the body is either passed as faeces or absorbed and excreted in the urine.

1. Enzyme Action generally.—The substances which bring about this change are known as ferments, enzymes or zymins. Formerly it was believed that there were two distinct classes