Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/545

P E P P E P 519 New York State and the remaining one-third in Michigan. The yield averages from 10 to 30 fb per acre. The cultivation of pepper mint has recently been extended to the southern States. In Michi gan the plant was introduced in 1855, and in 1858 there were about 2100 acres under cultivation, and 100 distilleries yielding 15,000 ft> of oil. In 1870 one of the best-known growers of New York State is said to have sent out as much as 57,365 lb. In 1876 the United States exported to Hamburg 25,840 R> of peppermint oil against 14,890 ft sent by Great Britain to the same port. (E. M. H.) PEPPER TREE. The tree usually so called has no real consanguinity Avith the true pepper (Piper ), but is a member of the Anacard family known botanically as Schinus Molle or Mulli, the latter epithet representing, it is said, the Peruvian name of the plant. It is a small tree with unequally pinnate leaves, the segments linear, entire or finely saw-toothed, the terminal one longer than the rest, and all filled with volatile oil stored in large cells or cysts, which are visible to the naked eye and appear like holes when the leaf is held up to the light. When the leaves are thrown upon the surface of water the resinous or oily fluid escapes with such force as violently to agitate them. The flowers are small, whitish, arranged in terminal clusters, and polygamous or unisexual, with five sepals, as many petals, ten stamens (as large as the petals in the case of the male flower, very small in the female flower, but in both springing from a cushion-like disk surrounding the base of the three -celled ovary). The style is simple or three-cleft, and the fruit a small, globose, pea-like drupe with a bony kernel enclosing a single seed. The fleshy portion of the fruit has a hot aromatic flavour from the abundance of the resin it contains, and to this circumstance the tree probably owes its popular name. The resin is used for medicinal purposes by the Peruvians, and has similar properties to mastic. The Japan pepper tree is Xanthoxylum piperitum, the fruits of which have also a hot taste. Along the Riviera the tree known as Mdia Azedarach, or the " Pride of India," a very ornamental tree with elegant foliage and dense clusters of fragrant lilac flowers, is also incorrectly called the pepper tree by visitors. PEPSIN. See NUTRITION, vol. xvii. p. 675 sq. PEPYS, SAMUEL (1633-1703), was the fifth child of John Pepys and Margaret (Perkins? Diary, 17th Septem ber 1663), and was born on 23d February 1632/3. His family was of the middle class, and at this time was in humble circumstances, his father being a tailor in London, while an uncle and an aunt, named Perkins, lived in poverty in the Fens near Wisbeach. His father s elder brother Robert had a small property at Brampton in Huntingdonshire, and Samuel was at school at Hunting don about 1644. Thence he went to St Paul s, London, and on 21st June 1650 was entered as a sizar at Trinity College, Cambridge, but was transferred on 1st October in the same year to Magdalene, where he became pensioner on 4th March following. On 3d April 1651 he was elected scholar on the Spendluffe foundation, and on 4th October 1653 on that of Dr John Smith. Exactly a fortnight afterwards he was admonished by the registrar before all the fellows in residence for being " scandalously overserved with drink the night before." His love of drink, so constantly illustrated in the early pages of his Diary, would have been a serious drawback to his advance ment, had not his love of work and order been a still stronger impulse. The crisis was reached on Sunday, 29th September 1661, when he was too drunk to trust himself to read prayers to the household. After that he makes resolute vows against wine, which he often breaks, and with regard to which he displays curious powers of self-deception. Nothing more is known of Pepys s college career, though he tells us that he was addicted to writing romances. He became a moderate classical scholar ; it is, however, a curious commentary upon the university training of those days that, after his appointment to the navy board, he is found busy with the multiplication table, which he speaks of as entirely new to him, and of his daily progress in which he is not a little proud. After this he becomes en amoured of arithmetic and teaches his wife the science also. In October 1 1655 Pepys married Elizabeth St Michel, a girl of fifteen, of great beauty, whose father, a Hugue not refugee in England, was at this time in very poor circumstances. She was a good cook and a good house keeper, and was both clever and warm-tempered ; Pepys, vain, quarrelsome, fussy, and pedantic, was unfitted, save by a general goodness of heart, to manage a high-spirited girl ; and the pages of the Diary are full of bickerings and downright quarrels arising out of trifles, the entries of Avhich, though often amusing, are as often extremely pathetic. Pepys and his wife, who were destitute of funds, were received by Sir Edward Montagu, afterwards earl of Sandwich, whose mother had married Pepys s grandfather. Pepys probably acted as Montagu s secretary. He was successfully cut for the stone on 26th March 1657/8, an anniversary which he always notes with gratitude. In March 1658/9 he accompanied Montagu and Algernon Sidney to the Sound on board the "Naseby" (afterwards the " Charles "). To this he more than once refers as the beginning of his fortunes. On his return he was employed as a clerk in the army pay-office of the exchequer under Downing, afterwards Sir George Downing. In January 1659/60 Pepys began to keep his Diary. He was at this time living in Axe Yard, Westminster, in a small house with one servant, on straitened means. On 29th January he can count but 40 ; his great object is to get on and to " put money in his purse ; " and by 24th May 1661 he is worth ,500. Political principles he had none, though his personal attachment to James (II.) makes him call himself a Tory ; but it is noticeable that even before the Restoration he regularly attended the Church of England service carried on by Peter Gunning, afterwards successively bishop of Chester and of Ely. Of active religious convictions Pepys leaves no trace, but he was ever a steady church-goer ; and the epithets he applies to the sermons are very happy in their causticity. In February he went to Cambridge to settle his brother in his old college. One side of what was distinctly a coarse-grained nature is exhibited in an entry during this week, where he describes himself (as on many other occasions) as " playing the fool with the lass of the house." His views of women, indeed, are almost always vulgar ; he was given to clumsy gallantry, and he was certainly unfaithful to his wife. In March Montagu gave Pepys the post of secretary to the generals at sea. While the fleet lay off the Dutch coast he made a short journey into Holland. At this time he secured the favour of the duke of York; and he retained it through life. On 28th June he became clerk of the acts of the navy, an office which Montagu had procured for him against powerful competition. A salary of a little over 100 a year, afterwards increased to 350, was attached to the post, but Pepys had to pay an annuity of 100 to his predecessor in office. On 23d July he became clerk of the privy seal, the fees from which, at any rate for a time, brought him in an additional 3 a day (Diary, 10th August 1660). In this month he took his M.A. degree. On 24th September he was sworn in as J.P. for Middlesex, Essex, Kent, and Southampton. He now lived in Seething Lane, in front of the navy office, Crutched Friars. In July 1661, on the death of his uncle, the Brampton estate, worth 80 a year, came to his father, and on the latter s 1 Pepys himself gives 10th October as the date ; the registers of St Margaret s church (Westminster) say that the banns were published on 19th, 22d, and 29th October, and that he was married on 1st December. See Notes and Queries, 30th August 1S84.