- WITH limes, with lemons, let thy fences glow,
- Grateful to sense; now children of this clime: [500]
- And here and there let oranges erect
- Their shapely beauties, and perfume the sky.
- Nor less delightful blooms the logwood-hedge,1
- Whose wood to coction yields a precious balm,
- Specific in the flux: Endemial ail,2 [505]
- Much cause have I to weep thy fatal sway.——
- But God is just, and man must not repine.
- Nor shall the ricinus3 unnoted pass;
VER. 500. Now children of this clime:] It is supposed that oranges, lemons, and limes were introduced into America by the Spaniards; but I am more inclined to believe they are natural to the climate. The Spaniards themselves probably had the two first from the Saracens,4 for the Spanish noun Naranja, whence the English word Orange, is plainly Arabic.
VER. 503. the logwood-hedge.] Linnaeus’s name for this useful tree is Haemotoxylon, but it is better known to physicians by that of Lignum campechense. Its virtues, as a medicine, and properties as an ingredient in dying, need not to be enumerated in this place. It makes a no less strong than beautiful hedge in the West-Indies, where it rises to a considerable height.
VER. 508. Nor shall the ricinus] This shrub is commonly called the physic-nut. It is generally divided into three kinds, the common, the French, and the Spanish, which differ from each other in their leaves and flowers, if not in their fruit or seeds. The plant from which the castor-oil is extracted is also called Ricinus, though it has no resemblance to any of the former, in leaves, flowers, or seeds. In one particular they all agree, viz. in their yielding to coction or expression a purgative or emetic5 oil. The Spaniards name these nuts Avellanas purgativas; hence Ray6 terms them Avellanae purgatrices novi orbis. By roasting they are supposed to lose part of their virulency, which is wholly destroyed, say some people, by taking out a leaf-like substance that is to be found between the lobes. The nut exceeds a walnut, or even an almond,7 in sweetness, and yet three or four of them will operate briskly both up and down. The French call this useful shrub Medecinier. That species of it which bears red coral like flowers is named Bellyach8 by the Barbadians; and its ripe seeds are supposed to be specific against melancholy.9
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Logwood is the commercial product of a tree (Haematoxylum campechianum) indigenous to Belize and the southeastern coast of the Gulf of Campeche and the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. A source of the dye substance haematoxylin, which produces blue, red, and purple colors. ↩︎
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The flux is a general term for gastrointestinal disorders like dysentery (also known as the “bloody flux”). Dysentery remained a major public health concern throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Endemial means endemic or habitually present in a certain country or area. ↩︎
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Grainger refers here to the physic nut plant (Jatropha curcas), which is often conflated with the castor oil plant (Ricinus communis). The physic nut tree is native to the tropical Americas. It is toxic to human beings and livestock and was often used as a purgative in the eighteenth century. The castor oil plant is probably native to northeastern Africa. ↩︎
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Among the later Greeks and Romans, a name for the nomadic peoples of the Syro-Arabian desert; also used as a synonym for Arab and Muslim peoples. ↩︎
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Having the power to produce vomiting. ↩︎
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John Ray (1627-1705), English naturalist and botanist. Author of Historia plantarum (1686-1704), a three-volume encyclopedia of plants cataloging 18,600 species. ↩︎
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The walnut (Juglans regia) has a native range stretching from the Balkan Peninsula to Iran. The almond (Prunus dulcis) is primarily native to western Asia. ↩︎
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The bellyache bush (Jatropha gossypiifolia) has a native range that includes Mexico and the tropical Americas. ↩︎
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Prior to the eighteenth century, melancholy was understood within the framework of humoral theories of the body (articulated by Aristotle, Galen, and Hippocrates) as a disease caused by an excess of “black bile” and characterized by such emotions as fear or sadness without explicit cause. Use of the term had expanded by the time of Grainger’s writing to speak more generally of physiological disturbance, listlessness, or dejection. ↩︎