Pepper is of two kinds, the black and the white. Black pepper should be chosen large, heavy, firm, and not much shrivelled. White pepper is either factitious or genuine: the former is the ripe and perfect berry, prepared by steeping in sea-water and urine the best and soundest grains of black pepper for about the space of a week, when the skin or rind bursting, they are taken out and exposed to the heat of the sun until the skin or outer bark loosens, when they are rubbed with the hand till the rind falls off. The internal kernels are next perfectly dried in the sun, and then they are fit to be ground or manufactured into white pepper, together with such foreign ingredients as the conscience or ingenuity of the adulterator may suggest. The genuine white pepper consists of the blighted or imperfect berries of the same plant as produces the black pepper; but as it does not possess a strength and pungency, even when not adulterated, equal to the common black pepper, it is by no means preferable to that variety for domestic purposes, except where appearance is consulted, as in the case of its being brought to table. In fact, white pepper is always, whether genuine or factitious, inferior in flavour and quality to black pepper; and where it is factitious, its peculiar flavour and pungency are nearly lost. Where the berries are supposed to be factitious, the readiest way of detecting the fraud, (independent of the deterioration of quality and flavour, which must be evident to every judge of the genuine article,) is to throw a few of the pepper-corns into a little water; when the artificial produce will swell up and soon become soft and sticky, and on the least degree of agitation will dissolve or fall to powder, while the genuine corns will remain whole and unaffected. The same precaution that I have said should be observed by the purchasers of coffee—namely, never to let it pass through the mill of the grocer or vender, should also be observed in the purchase of pepper. When the cunning varlets have none of the adulterated pepper-corns by them, they will be sure of exerting some sleight-of-hand in slipping into the mill some of the before-mentioned sophisticating articles, or flour, or powdered hemp-seed or rape-seed cake, or ivory black, or the hieroglyphical P. D. or D. P. D. (if they are not already patiently waiting in the mill to lend their services as make-weights;) notwithstanding the poor purchaser may suppose himself lynx-eyed, and proof against imposition.