Page:Illustrations of Indian Botany, Vol. 2.djvu/80

36 fruit is used by all ranks of people ; cooked in its unripe state, as a vegetable ; or served up, when ripe, as part of the dessert, with perfect impunity.

It is a common practice with some of the farmers of the Island of Barbadoes, to give an infusion of the raw fruit ; or, to speak more exactly, a diffusion of the milky juice in water, extracted from the fruit, to horses, with a view, as they express it, " of breaking down the blood ;" and it is a fact, well established, that if given to a horse, whose blood exhibits the cupped buffy coat, it will, after some time, produce a loose coagulum, and reduce the inflammatory symptoms which gave rise to it. I understood, from my friend, the late Dr Jones, of Barbadoes, well known in this University, by the publication of an ingenious experimental Thesis, that he had ascertained this to be the effect of the papaw juice on a horse, which had cough. and whose blood was buffy; and this account has very recently been confirmed to me, by a near connection of Dr. Jones's, a gentleman who formerly lived with him, and who is at present a residenter in this city, as a student of medicine.

That this remarkable effect is independent of putrefaction, or of a process verging to putrefaction, is rendered extremely probable, by the fact, that it is not confined to dead muscular fibre, but is produced on the circulating blood ; or, at least, on one of its constituent parts. At the same time, the consequence of this effect will no doubt be by its mechanical operation, to promote and hasten putrefaction, on account of its destroying the cohesion of the flesh, and separating the fibres. This is a fact so well known to the housewives of the colony, that they will not purchase, for salting, pork which has been partly fattened on the boiled fruit of the papaw (a practice commonly followed by the negroes of the colony), on account of the flesh not being sufficiently firm for salting ; or, at least, because they find, by experience, that, after having undergone the process of salting, it will not keep as long, or as well as flesh of hogs "which have been fattened on any other aliment. What is remarkable, this effect is observable, although the flesh of a recently killed animal, fed on the boiled papaw fruit, is not sensibly intenerated : For a society of gentlemen, who were in the habit of dining periodically with the late Governor of Barbadoes, Sir George Beckwith, fed several animals in this way, with a view to ascertain the effect on the flesh. We found, that when the animals so fattened, were served up, their flesh was not, to the taste, more tender than that of other animals at the table, fed in the common mode.

The health of animals fed on the Papaw, is not injured by that diet.

I may add, that the juice of the Papaw has been, by some, administered as a vermifuge to children, whether with marked success I am doubtful.

The chemical analysis of the juice of the Carica Papaya has given, in the hands of Vauquelin, some very curious results : from them, he draws the following conclusion.

" I think," says he " that there cannot beany doubt that the juice of the Papaw is a highly animalized substance; at least it possesses all the characters, and yields all the products of one. I confess that it has no perfect similitude with any known animal matter. Nevertheless, I believe that which it resembles most, is animal albumen ; since dried, it dissolves, like it, in water. Its solution is coagulated by heat, by the acids, by the alkalies, the metallic solutions, and the infusion of nut-galls. And, in fine, because, by distillation, it yields the same products as any animal substances whatever. It is not the animal nature of this substance which ought to surprise us ; for the juices of almost all plants contain some of it ; but its abundance and its purity in that of the papaw."

Carica Papaya — female plant.

1. A full grown tree, presenting the unusual appearance of bearing several large branches, attributable to the terminal bud of the parent stem having been injured which caused the lateral ones to shoot.

2. A female flower, natural size.

3. Ovary and calyx, petals detached.

4. Portions of the stigma more highly magnified.

5. Ovary cut transversely.

6. Cut vertically — one-celled, the whole inner surface covered with ovules.

7. A seed enclosed in its sack or arillus.

8. The sack opened showing the seed.

9. Seed cut transversely, showing the embryo in the midst of a large albumen.

10. Seed cut vertically showing the embryo in situ.