Piper, in Natural History, an aromatic berry of a hot quality, chiefly used in seasoning. We have three kinds of pepper at present used in the shops, the black, the white, and the long pepper.
Black pepper is the fruit of the piper, and is brought from the Dutch settlements in the East Indies. See Piper, Botany Index.
The common white pepper is factitious, being prepared from the black in the following manner: they steep this in sea-water, exposed to the heat of the sun for several days, till the rind or outer bark looses; they then take it out, and, when it is half dry, rub it till the rind falls off; then they dry the white fruit, and the remains of the rind blow away like chaff. A great deal of the heat of the pepper is taken off by this process, so that the white kind is more fit for many purposes than the black. However, there is a sort of native white pepper produced on a species of the same plant; which is much better than the factitious, and indeed little inferior to the black.
The long pepper is a dried fruit, of an inch or an inch and a half in length, and about the thickness of a large goose quill: it is of a brownish gray colour, cylindrical in figure, and said to be produced on a plant of the same genus.
Pepper is principally used by us in food, to assist digestion: but the people in the East Indies esteem it as a stomachic, and drink a strong infusion of it in water by way of giving them an appetite: they have also a way of making a fiery spirit of fermented fresh pepper with water, which they use for the same purposes. They have also a way of preserving the common and long pepper in vinegar, and eating them afterwards at meals.
Jamaica PEPPER, or Pimento. See Laurus, Botany Index.
PEPPER-Mint. See Mentha, Botany and Materia Medica Index.
PEPPER-Pot. See Capsicum, Botany Index.
PEPPER-Water, a liquor prepared in the following manner, for microscopical observations: Put common black pepper, grossly powdered, into an open vessel so as to cover the bottom of it half an inch thick, and put to it rain or river water, till it covers it an inch; shake or stir the whole well together at the first mixing, but never disturb it afterwards: let the vessel be exposed to the air uncovered; and in a few days there will be seen a pellicle or thin skin swimming on the surface of the liquor, presenting several colours.
This is a congeries of multitudes of small animals; and being examined by the microscope, will be seen all in motion: the animals, at first sight, are so small as not to be distinguishable, unless to the greatest magnifiers; but they grow daily till they arrive at their full size. Their numbers are also continually increasing, till the whole surface of the liquor is full of them, to a considerable depth. When disturbed, they will sometimes all dart down to the bottom; but they soon after come up to the surface again. The skin appears soonest in warm weather, and the animals grow the quickest: but in the severest cold it will succeed, unless the water freezes.
About the quantity of a pin's head of this scum, taken up on the nib of a new pen, or the tip of a hair-pencil, is to be laid on a plate of clear glass; and if applied first to the third magnifier, then to the second, and finally to the first, will show the different animalcules it contains, of several kinds and shapes as well as sizes.