the following manner:--The pepper is first steeped in sea
water and urine, and then exposed to the heat of the sun for several
days, till the rind or outer bark loosens; it is then taken out of the
steep, and, when dry, it is rubbed with the hand till the rind falls
off. The white fruit is then dried, and the remains of the rind blown
away like chaff. A great deal of the peculiar flavour and pungent hot
taste of the pepper is taken off by this process. White pepper is always
inferior in flavour and quality to the black pepper.

However, there is a sort of native white pepper, produced on a species
of the pepper plant, which is much better than the factitious, and
indeed little inferior to the common black pepper.

FOOTNOTES:

[104] Thomson's Annals of Chemistry, 1816; also Repository of Arts, vol.
i. 1816, p. 11.

[105] George III. c. 53, Sec. 21, 1819.

_Poisonous Cayenne Pepper._

Cayenne pepper is an indiscriminate mixture of the powder of the dried
pods of many species of capsicum, but especially of the capsicum
frutescens, or bird pepper, which is the hottest of all.

This annual plant, a native of South America, is cultivated in large
quantities in our West-India islands, and even frequently in our
gardens, for the beauty of its pods, which are long, pointed, and
pendulous, at first of a green colour, and, when ripe, of a bright
orange red. They are filled with a dry loose pulp, and contain many
small, flat, kidney-shaped seeds. The taste of capsicum is extremely
pungent and acrimonious, setting the mouth, as it were, on fire.

The principle on which its pungency depends, is soluble in water and in
alcohol.

It is sometimes adulterated with red lead, to prevent it becoming
bleached on exposure to light. This fraud may be readily detected by
shaking up part of it in a stopped vial containing water impregnated
with sulphuretted hydrogen gas, which will cause it speedily to assume a
dark muddy black colour. Or the vegetable matter of the pepper may be
destroyed, by throwing a mixture of one part of the suspected pepper and
three of nitrate of potash (or two of chlorate of potash) into a red-hot
crucible, in small quantities at a time. The mass left behind may then
be digested in weak nitric acid, and the solution assayed for lead by
water impregnated with sulphuretted hydrogen.

_Poisonous Pickles._

Vegetable substances, preserved in the state called pickles, by means of
the antisept