There are two crops a year—July and December—which yield 5 to 6 lbs. of dried pepper each for a single vine. When the berries are ripe the stalk is pinched off by hand and placed in an oblong cane basket, slung horizontally behind the plucker by a rope around his waist. The rounded ends of the basket extend a little on either side, so that the basket can be easily filled by either hand of the workman. The berries are rubbed off the spikes by hand and placed on mats or on the bare ground, to dry in the sun, when the weather is fair. In damp or cloudy weather they are placed in shallow, open baskets before a gentle fire. If the berries are left too long on the vines they lose part of their aromatic, pungent hot taste, and if gathered too soon they become broken and dusty in drying. After drying, when they become black and shriveled up, they are cleaned and winnowed. Good black pepper is firm and not too deeply wrinkled, does not easily crumble or break in the hand, it is also heavy and readily sinks in water. The inner seed should be hard, round and smooth and of a grayish-brown color. The outside pericarp should be brownish-black. A yellow tinge betrays over-ripeness and consequent loss of strength. A reprehensible practice among some dealers to hide defective peppers is to artificially blacken them and polish with oil. The usual method of judging quality is by weight, the grades technically being known as heavy, or shot, half-heavy and light peppers or corns. A one-litre measure may be filled with the pepper and the contents weighed, or 100 corns of average size counted and their weight ascertained. The variations of peppers of different qualities, according to their habitat, are given in the following table:

It is evident that the moisture present in the corns plays an important part in the determination of the weight, and it will be necessary to bring the peppers up to the stated water content by either drying them or placing them in a moist atmosphere, or first weigh them dry and weigh again. A slight variation, however, from the figures given, is unavoidable.

Singapore Pepper—The principal part of this import is the product of Sumatra, Borneo and Siam, collected at Singapore. A considerable quantity, however, is the products of the Straits Settlements themselves. It is of large size and of a fairly uniform quality, but as pepper powder it is not much esteemed, owing to the manner of drying, giving it a smoky flavor that buyers can distinguish Singapore pepper from peppers grown elsewhere.

Tellicherry and Alleppey are much alike in appearance, both being light brown in color. They too, like the Malabar peppers, are sun-dried. Mangalore (India) pepper is heavy, large, of a deep black color, very clean, and of uniform size. When powdered it is of a greenish-black appearance.

The pepper shipped from Penang is called Irang pepper and is grown in Sumatra. From the east end of the same island comes the Lampong pepper, but this lacks uniformity, and is light in color. It is also sun-dried. Long pepper is the fruit spike of Chivaci Roxburgh, a native of Malabar and Chavica officinarum, a native of the India archipelago; they are both climbing plants. The first pods, or catkins, about 1½ in. long, grow nearly straight, and opposite the leaves. They are gathered before they are ripe and dried in the sun, when they become brown or dark green in color and rough to the touch. They lack the pungency of the black variety. The long pepper plant dies at the end of 3 years, and after the fruit is collected the vine dies down to the ground. The fruit grows so close together on the spike that when ripe they become one solid mass. There is also a variety of long pepper called elephant pepper. Long peppers are mostly used for pickles. A medium, called Pippua moola, is made from the roots and stems; it is very stimulating.

Cubeb peppers are the berries of the vine Cubeb officinalis, a product of Java, Borneo and Sumatra, but mostly imported by way of Batavia and Canton. They are of a gray color, about the size of black pepper, somewhat longer, more wrinkled and with a short slender stalk. They have a hot, camphor taste. Another kind is distinguished by a mace-like odor and taste. Cubebs are now mostly used as a medicine.

Ashantee or West African pepper is the dried berry of a pepper plant which grows in tropical Africa. It is smoother and smaller than the black pepper and resembles the Cubeb very closely. In taste it resembles the ordinary black pepper. At one time its importation was forbidden by the king of Portugal, as it threatened to interfere with the commerce of India.

Betel pepper is the berry of Chavica betel, a species of climbing vine largely cultivated in the East Indies, Ceylon, Burma, Siam, etc. It furnishes the leaves which are used along with arecanut and other ingredients to compose the favorite stimulant chewing mixture of the people of India.

White pepper is from the same plant as black pepper, with the difference, that to make white pepper the pepper corns are not picked until fully ripe; they are then soaked in water for 7 or 8 days, or heaped up so that the pulp ferments, then they are rubbed by hand, or on a coarse cloth, if the quantity be small, or trampled under foot if the quantity be large; this operation deprives them of the pulpy skin or husk, and the greenish-white seeds which remain are the white peppers of commerce; then they are re-dried, either in the sun or by artificial heat. White pepper is bleached whiter by a chemical process. If the berries be left on the vines until over-ripe they lose their pulpy husk by natural decay and thus become actually white pepper, altho in reality they are the kernels of black pepper.

Singapore white are berries cultivated in the neighboring islands and the husks are removed at Singapore by hand and friction before the berries are fully dried. Penang white is really grown at Sumatra, but imported into Penang in a dried state. There the berries are soaked in lime and water for several weeks, until the pulp is soft, when it is rubbed off by hand and washing; the berries are then re-dried.

Siam white are berries prepared in the same manner as Singapore white, from berries grown in Siam.

The dried black peppers, as imported, are also decorticated or deprived of their husks by machinery, the result being white pepper, which is sometimes bleached.

The active properties of pepper are an acrid resin, a volatile oil, and a crystallizable, colorless substance called pipertine, or peperic. Why white pepper should be preferred before the black is one of the anomalies of the trade. White pepper has really only about a quarter the strength of black pepper, and is the least economical to use for these reasons: (1) Because of being allowed to ripen it loses much of its pungency. (2) Because it is deprived of the outer skin or husk, which contains much of the constituents which go to make good pepper. (3) Because it contains scarcely a trace of piperin, one of the most active principles of pepper. Pepper rapidly deteriorates under atmospheric influences, and large stocks should not be carried unless provisions are made for storing it in air-tight receptacles, for, unless this precaution is taken, the goods in a few months will have lost their pungency, which is an essential characteristic of good pepper.

Pepper is a stimulant, and used in moderate quantities is an aid to digestion. In India an infusion of it is used to create an appetite and as a cure for gout and palsy. It is also used in cases of cholera-morbus. A liniment is made from the berries for rheumatism, and the root is employed as a tonic stimulant and cordial.