SOUR AND SWEET SOPS. ANNONA. 1 MURICATA. ROUGH.

The sour sop is a middle sized tree, rarely above twelve or fourteen feet high, or at most twenty. Trunk upright, with stiff, round, smooth, branches, and a brownish ash-coloured bark. Leaves petioled, alternate, sparse, oblong, acuminate, entire, shining, firm, stiffish; petioles short. Peduncles axillary, solitary, thick, longer than the petioles, one-flowered. Flowers coriaceous, yellow. Calyx one-leafed, triangular; corolla three-petaled, petals acuminate, thick, concave, coriaceous, smooth, scabrous on the outside, pale green. Nectary three-leaved, leaflets alternate with the petals, only half the size, subcordate, smooth, convex, yellow. Filaments scarcely any; anthers rather pedicelled, sub-obovate, bivalve, whitish; styles very short, crowded together into a conical form; stigmas oblique, hirsute after flowering time. Berry difform, cordate-oblong, muricate with prickles, bowed back, fleshy; seeds oblong, black, with a lateral scar of a different colour, placed in a ring. The smell and taste of the fruit, flowers, and whole plant, resemble very much those of black currants. There is a variety of it in Jamaica with inodorous leaves, larger flowers, of a fulvous colour, and spherical mucronate fruits.—Swartz. The pulp of this fruit, which grows to the size of a bullock's heart, is soft, white, and of a sour-sweetish taste, intermixed with oblong dark-coloured seeds. It grows very commonly even in the savannas in Jamaica. The Indian name of this tree is suir sack. This fruit is considered of a cooling and agreeable nature, but is the less esteemed on account of its being so common. Taken on an empty stomach it has been known to cure obstinate intermittents. A decoction of the roots is given in Guadaloupe as a cure for the poison of fish. Being reduced to powder, the root snuffed up the nose, Grainger says, produces the same effect as tobacco; and, taken by the mouth, the Indians pretend it is a specific in the epilepsy. The leaves are commonly thrown into fowl-houses for the purpose of destroying fowl-lice. Sloane says, “when they are unripe, and about the bigness of turnips, if so dressed they eat like them. Of the unripe fruit pressed is made a wine, which is as clear as water, and is good for fluxes and cankers in childrens mouths. The leaves infused, according to Piso, or burned and mixed with oil, being rubbed into an apostheme, ripens, opens, and heals it.”