The wild nutmeg (myristica argentea) tree grows very high with a leaf equal in size to the horse chestnut, with a silvery top, and in Germany it is called the “horse nutmeg.” It is found in New Guinea, Amboina, and the Banda Islands. The nuts, when fresh from the trees, are about four and one-half centimeters to six and one-half centimeters in length, and four and one-half centimeters to five and one-half centimeters in diameter. They are first of a bright red, but later scattered yellow-brown veins or specks appear which contain the aroma. After the husk is removed, the nut is about three and one-half to four and one-half centimeters long and from two to two and one-half centimeters in diameter, and the testa is nearly one millimeter thick. They abound in a disagreeable oil, which, of course, will rob them of the pleasant nutmeg flavor which is found in the cultivated nut. The thick pericarp or outer covering is hard and brittle. The mace which covered it is insipid, is of a reddish color, has a disagreeable odor and it generally consists of four stripes which are united above and below. It is broadest at the base, gradually narrowing toward the end. The fruit is elongated, or ellipsoidal, rusty, tomentose, in shape like a date, and differs from the true nutmeg in being less marked by the arillus furrows. The cotyledons are joined in a disc swelled at its edges to five millimeters diameter, and the endosperm contains much starch. Myristica argentea nutmegs are sometimes used medicinally for dysentery, headache, and other ailments, and those long nutmegs (male), wild myristica tomentosa (myristica fatua), are next in flavor to the true myristica fragrans, and are the kind sold in the market as Macassars. Another kind scarcely worthy of mention is the myristica succedanea, a variety found on the Island of Tidor, which is very similar to the myristica fragrans. Other so-called nuts which rarely figure in our market except as a substitute to adulterate are the American, Jamaicans, or Calabash (monodora myristica), Brazilian (cryptocarya maschata), Californian or stinking (torreya myristica), Madagascar or clove (agathophyllum aromaticum), Peruvian (laurelia semperviren), Plume (atherosperma maschata), Sante Fe (myristica otoba) of New Granada and the myristica sebifera virola sebifera aublet, the seed of which furnishes an abundance of aromatic yellow tallow which has a crystalline appearance and is suitable to manufacture into candles. All of these varieties are not much better than the wooden nutmegs from the Nutmeg State, or the one made by the heathen Chinese out of sawdust and clay.