Pepper, with cinnamon, salt and incense, was one of the staple commodities which anciently passed over the caravan routes between Venice and India. At that time its price was extremely high and, according to E. M. Holmes, rents were frequently paid in this article as late as the middle ages. After the sack of Rome by the barbarians one of the articles of tribute demanded by Alaric was a thousand pounds of pepper. As late as the eighteenth century the pepper trade was confined to the Portuguese. In recent years it has become one of the cheapest of our spices. [Illustration: Round Pepper.] The pepper plant is a vine, of the order _piperaceæ_, which grows wild in China, is also indigenous to Malabar and other islands of the East Indies, and has been introduced into the West Indies. The plants require a rich moist soil, bearing after the fourth year and continuing fruitful for from eight to fourteen years. The most famous of the pepper islands are the Penang, which furnish more than half the amount produced by the entire East Indies. Only the berries of the pepper plant are valuable and these, being gathered before fully developed, have a wrinkled appearance when dried. The berries used for white pepper are decorticated either in the islands or in London and reach the United States ready for grinding. The finest grade passes through more than twenty different operations before it is considered marketable. Black pepper differs from the white in the leaving on of the hull, which is black and contains the acrid principles of the flavor. Hence, white pepper is less pungent and fully as fine in flavor as the black. Shot pepper consists of the finest berries, those richest in oil. It is selected by throwing a quantity of the berries in water. Those which sink are collected, labeled, and sold as shot pepper. Long pepper, referred to by the Greeks as _piperi macron_, is the unripe fruit of a species of pepper, an inch or more in length and and shaped like a spike. The flavor is similar to that of ordinary black pepper. African pepper is another variety. Those best known to the western markets are Penang, Tellicherry and Malabar. Cumin or cummin is a small herbaceous plant, native to Egypt and very early cultivated in the Mediterranean countries. It is now grown in India, Sicily and Malta, the seeds only being valuable. These contain a large proportion of essential oil which gives them an aromatic but acrid flavor. They are not now used in cookery though receipts are still extant which prove them to have once been considered a valuable culinary spice. The Latin poets relate that the ancients used cumin seeds medicinally, their effect being to produce languor. They are referred to in Isaiah as being “beaten out with a rod” and also in the Mosaic law regarding tithes.