Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XII.djvu/557

 NUTMEG NUTRITION 543 pin. According to Chevallier, old nuts which have become riddled by insects have their holes stopped by a mixture of flour, oil, and pow- dered nutmegs ; and in Marseilles false nuts have been fabricated from bran, clay, and' the refuse of nutmegs. In either case the fraud may be readily detected by soaking the suspected sample in water. The long or wild nutmeg is the produce of myristica fatua, found in similar localities with the true nut- meg ; it is about 1^ in. long, and pointed. This is the " male nutmeg " of the older wri- ters ; it is greatly inferior to the round nut- meg, some specimens being almost without flavor ; it is rarely to be met with in this coun- try ; the inace of this species, called wild or false mace, is nearly devoid of flavor. It is said that the long nutmeg is sometimes mixed with the round, an adulteration at once detect- ed by the eye. Several other species of myris- tica yield nutmegs of inferior quality. Seeds of the South American M. Mcuiba and M. officinalis have their faint aroma changed by some bitter principle ; the seeds of the West Indian M. sebifera, when treated with hot water, yield a fat of which candles are made. For a long time the Dutch had a monopoly of nutmeg culture, and made great efforts to preserve it. They were possessors of the Banda group, consisting of ten islands, and re- stricted the cultivation of nutmegs to four of these, destroying the trees in all their other possessions. They made wars upon the inhabi- tants of islands not belonging to them, and in their treaties of peace stipulated that every nutmeg tree should be destroyed. The carry- ing of trees or fresh seed from these islands was prohibited under heavy penalties, and the liming of the nuts was done quite as much to kill the embryo as to prevent the attacks of in- sects. In order to keep the price up to their standard, the surplus crop in years of unusual abundance was burned ; a Dutch writer states that he saw three piles of nutmegs burned, " each of which was more than a church of ordinary dimensions could hold." But nature was not in sympathy with this narrow policy, and, by means against which the most rigid laws were powerless, the tree was distributed to numerous other localities ; the agent in effecting this was the nutmeg pigeon, carpopJiaga cenea, a fine large species found in all the Indian islands ; this bird lives largely upon the fresh mace, swallowing the nutmeg with its enveloping mace, and, after this is removed by digestion, voiding the nutmeg encased in its shell, un- harmed, and ready to vegetate if dropped in a favorable spot. Localities of which the Dutch did not even know the existence were thus stocked with the trees ; a most fortunate pro- vision, as in 1778 a violent hurricane and earthquake visited the Banda islands, which for years afterward furnished but few nutmegs. From 1796 to 1802, and again from 1810 to 1814, the English had possession of the Spice islands, and during these intervals the nutmeg 612 VOL. xii. 35 tree was taken to various parts of the East, to the Calcutta botanic garden, to Mauritius, French Guiana, and the West Indies, and is now beyond the control of any one govern- ment. The attempts to cultivate the tree in the West Indies have not been successful ; the original trees, though they have grown to a large size, bear but a small number of fruits. The nutmegs of the Banda islands are sent to Batavia, whence they are exported; in 1871 1,080,933 Ibs. were shipped from Batavia, of which 306,666 Ibs. came to this country, and a larger quantity went to Singapore, from which in the same year 310,576 Ibs. American, cala- bash, and Jamaica nutmegs are names given to the seeds of monodora myristica, a small West Indian tree of the order anonacece, and related to our custard apple or papaw. Its fruit is about the size of an orange, with numerous seeds having the flavor of nutmeg. California nutmeg is the fruit of Torreya Californica. (See TOEREYA.) Peruvian nutmegs are the aromatic seeds of laurelia sempermrens. Bra- zilian nutmegs are the seeds of cryptocarya moschata, one of the laurel family. NUTRIA. See COYPTJ. NUTRITION, the growth arid reparation of liv- ing organisms, animal and vegetable. Animal nutrition in its most extended sense includes the various complex processes of digestion, chylification, sanguification, circulation, respi- ration, assimilation, secretion, and excretion. In a more restricted sense it is the conversion of nutritive material into the various tissues of the body. The first important process of nu- trition is digestion (see DIGESTION) ; the next is the conversion of the digested material into blood, or the process of sanguification ; the third is the formation of bodily tissue from the constituents of the blood (assimilation), "which is done by virtue of the power of selective appropriation by the tissues themselves. The materials appropriated by the organism may be divided into two kinds, the nitrogenous or pro- teinaceous, and the non-nitrogenous or hydro- carbonaceous. This branch of the subject will be found treated under the heads ALIMENT, ANIMAL HEAT, and DIETETICS. The action of the nervous system has much to do with the functions of nutrition, principally because of the influence the nerves have upon the cir- culation of the blood. That nervous condition which causes an increased circulation of the blood in a part will, if continued, cause its larger development, instances of which are seen in the arms of blacksmiths and the legs of dancers. Therefore exercise or training be- comes an important element in influencing the nutrition and development of the whole or parts of the body. Disassimilation or the disintegra- tion of structure, the initiative process of excre- tion, must always accompany a continuance of nutrition, because the detention of excrementi- tious matter would not only poison the fluids, and in this way prevent assimilation, but would
 * place there were exported to the United States