Page:EB1911 - Volume 05.djvu/614

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CAYENNE PEPPER—CAYLEY
589

inhabitants of the town, but the climate, though moist, is as a whole healthy. (See Guiana.)


CAYENNE PEPPER (Guinea Pepper, Spanish Pepper, Chilly), a preparation from the dried fruit of various species of Capsicum, a genus of the natural order Solanaceae. The true peppers are members of a totally distinct order, Piperaceae. The fruits of plants of the genus Capsicum have all a strong, pungent flavour. The capsicums bear a greenish-white flower, with a star-shaped corolla and five anthers standing up in the centre of the flower like a tube, through which projects the slender style. The pod-like fruit consists of an envelope at first fleshy and afterwards leathery, within which are the spongy pulp and several seeds. The plants are herbaceous or shrubby; the leaves are entire, and alternate, or in pairs near one another; the flowers are solitary and do not arise in the leaf-axils. There are about thirty species, natives of Central and South America. They are now grown in various parts of the world, both for the sake of the fruit and for ornament. In England the annual sorts are sown from March to the middle of April under a frame. They can be planted out when 2 or 3 in. high, and in June may be transferred to a light rich soil in the open garden. They flower in July or August, and produce pods from August till the end of September. The perennial and shrubby kinds may be wintered in a conservatory. Several species or varieties are used to make cayenne pepper. The annual or common capsicum (C. annuum), the Guinea pepper plant, was brought to Europe by the Spaniards, and was grown in England in 1548. It is indigenous to South America, but is now cultivated in India, Hungary, Italy, Spain and Turkey, with the other species of capsicum. It is a hardy herbaceous plant, which attains a height of 2 or 3 ft. There are numerous cultivated forms, differing in the shape and colour of the pod, which varies from more or less roundish to narrow-conical, with a smooth or wrinkled coat, and white, yellow, red or black in colour. The principal source of cayenne pepper is C. frutescens, the spur or goat pepper, a dwarf shrub, a native of South America, but commonly cultivated in the East Indies. It produces a small, narrow, bright red pod, having very pungent properties. C. tetragonum, or bonnet pepper, is a species much esteemed in Jamaica; it bears very fleshy fruits. Other well-known kinds of capsicum are the cherry pepper (C. cerasiforme), with small berries; bell pepper (C. grossum), which has thick and pulpy fruit, well adapted for pickling; and berry or bird pepper (C. baccatum). The last mentioned has been grown in England since 1731; its fruit is globular, and about the size of a cherry. The West Indian stomachic man-dram is prepared by mashing a few pods of bird pepper and mixing them with sliced cucumber and shallots, to which have been added a little lime-juice and Madeira wine. Chillies, the dried ripe or unripe fruit of capsicums, especially C. annuum and C. frutescens, are used to make chilly-vinegar, as well as for pickles. Cayenne pepper is manufactured from the ripe fruits, which are dried, ground, mixed with wheat flour, and made into cakes with yeast; the cakes are baked till hard like biscuit, and then ground and sifted. The pepper is sometimes prepared by simply drying the pods and pounding them fine in a mortar. Cayenne pepper is occasionally adulterated with red lead, vermilion, ochre, salt, ground-rice and turmeric. The taste of the pepper is impaired by exposure to damp and the heat of the sun. Chillies have been in use from time immemorial; they are eaten in great quantity by the people of Guiana and other warm countries, and in Europe are largely consumed both as a spice and as medicine.

The dried ripe fruit of Capsicum frutescens from Zanzibar, known as pod pepper and Guinea pepper, is official in the British Pharmacopoeia under the name Capsici Fructus. The fruit has a characteristic, pungent odour and an intensely bitter taste. The chief constituents are a crystallizable resin, capsaicin, a volatile alkaloid, capsicine and a volatile oil. The dose is ½–1 grain. The British Pharmacopoeia contains two preparations of capsicum, a tincture (dose 5–15 minims) and an ointment. Externally the drug has the usual action of a volatile oil, being a very powerful counter-irritant. It does not, however, cause pustulation. Its internal action is also that of its class, but its marked contact properties make it specially useful in gastriatony and flatulence, and sometimes in hysteria.


CAYEY, an inland district and mountain town of the department of Guayama, Porto Rico, celebrated for its cool, invigorating climate and the beauty of its scenery. Pop. (1899) of the town, 3763; of the district, 14,442. The town is surrounded by mountain summits, the highest of which, El Torito, rises to an elevation of 2362 ft. above sea-level. It was made a military post by the Spaniards and used as an acclimatizing station. The old Spanish barracks have been enlarged and improved by the American military authorities and, under the name of “Henry Barracks,” are used for the same purpose. The town is a popular summer resort for residents of the coast cities. The surrounding country is wooded and very fertile, being especially noted for its coffee and tobacco. The town has large cigar factories. Cayey is connected with Guayama by an excellent military road.


CAYLEY, ARTHUR (1821–1895), English mathematician, was born at Richmond, in Surrey, on the 16th of August 1821, the second son of Henry Cayley, a Russian merchant, and Maria Antonia Doughty. His father, Henry Cayley, retired from business in 1829 and settled in Blackheath, where Arthur was sent to a private school kept by the Rev. G. B. F. Potticary; at the age of fourteen he was transferred to King’s College school, London. He soon showed that he was a boy of great capacity, and in particular that he was possessed of remarkable mathematical ability. On the advice of the school authorities he was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, as a pensioner. He was there coached by William Hopkins of Peterhouse, was admitted a scholar of the college in May 1840, and graduated as senior wrangler in 1842, and obtained the first Smith’s Prize at the next examination. In 1842, also, he was elected a fellow of Trinity, and became a major fellow in 1845, the year in which he proceeded to the M.A. degree. He was assistant tutor of Trinity for three years. In 1846, having decided to adopt the law as a profession, he left Cambridge, entered at Lincoln’s Inn, and became a pupil of the conveyancer Mr Christie. He was called to the bar in 1849, and remained at the bar fourteen years, till 1863, when he was elected to the new Sadlerian chair of pure mathematics in the university of Cambridge. He settled at Cambridge in the same year, and married Susan, daughter of Robert Moline of Greenwich. He continued to reside in Cambridge and to hold the professorship till his death, which occurred on the 26th of January 1895. From the time he went first to Cambridge till his death he was constantly engaged in mathematical investigation. The number of his papers and memoirs, some of them of considerable length, exceeds 800; they were published, at the time they were composed, in various scientific journals in Europe and America, and are now embodied, through the enterprise of the syndics of the Cambridge University Press, in thirteen large quarto volumes. These form an enduring monument to his fame. He wrote upon nearly every subject of pure mathematics, and also upon theoretical dynamics and spherical and physical astronomy. He was quite as much a geometrician as he was an analyst. Among his most remarkable works may be mentioned his ten memoirs on quantics, commenced in 1854 and completed in 1878; his creation of the theory of matrices; his researches on the theory of groups; his memoir on abstract geometry, a subject which he created; his introduction into geometry of the “absolute”; his researches on the higher singularities of curves and surfaces; the classification of cubic curves; additions to the theories of rational transformation and correspondence; the theory of the twenty-seven lines that lie on a cubic surface; the theory of elliptic functions; the attraction of ellipsoids; the British Association Reports, 1857 and 1862, on recent progress in general and special theoretical dynamics, and on the secular acceleration of the moon’s mean motion. He is justly regarded as one of the greatest of mathematicians. Competent judges have compared him to Leonhard Euler for his range, analytical power and introduction of new and fertile theories. He was the recipient of nearly every academic distinction that can be conferred upon an eminent man