or, as Mr Edward writes, Piemento, in botany, or Jamaica pepper, or Allspice, a species of the myrus. See Myrtus.

"The pimento trees grow spontaneously, and in great abundance, in many parts of Jamaica, but more particularly on hilly situations near the sea, on the northern side of that island; where they form the most delicious groves that can possibly be imagined; filling the air with fragrance, and giving reality, tho' in a very distant part of the globe, to our great poet's description of those balmy gales which convey to the delighted voyager

'Saheen odours from the spicy shore Of Araby the blest. Chear'd with the grateful smell, old ocean smiles.'

"This tree is purely a child of nature, and seems to mock all the labours of man in his endeavours to extend or improve its growth: not one attempt in fifty to propagate the young plants, or to raise them from the seeds, in parts of the country where it is not found growing spontaneously, having succeeded. The usual pimento method of forming a new pimento plantation (in Jamaica it is called a walk) is nothing more than to appropriate a piece of woodland, in the neighbourhood of a plantation already existing, or in a country where the scattered trees are found in a native state, the woods of which being fallen, the trees are suffered to remain on the ground till they become rotten and perish. In the course of twelve months after the first season, abundance of young pimento plants will be found growing vigorously in all parts of the land, being without doubt produced from ripe berries scattered there by the birds, while the fallen trees, &c., afford them both shelter and shade. At the end of two years it will be proper to give the land a thorough cleansing, leaving such only of the pimento trees as have a good appearance, which will then soon form such groves as those I have described, and, except perhaps for the first four or five years, require very little attention afterwards.

"Soon after the trees are in blossom, the berries become fit for gathering; the fruit not being suffered to ripen on the tree, as the pulp in that state, being moist and glutinous, is difficult to cure, and when dry becomes black and tasteless. It is impossible, however, to prevent some of the ripe berries from mixing with the rest; but if the proportion of them be great, the price of the commodity is considerably injured.

"It is gathered by the hand; one labourer on the tree, employed in gathering the small branches, will give employment to three below (who are generally women and children) in picking the berries; and an industrious picker will fill a bag of 70 lbs. in the day.

"The returns from a pimento walk in a favourable season are prodigious. A single tree has been known to yield 150 lbs. of the raw fruit, or one cwt. of the dried spice; there being commonly a loss in weight of one third in curing; but this, like many other of the minor productions, is exceedingly uncertain, and perhaps a very plentiful crop occurs but once in five years."