Excerpt from The Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. 11: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences and General Literature; Gou-Hip The bottle-gourds are now generally, placed in a separate genus, Lagenan'a, chieflyr differing from Cucurbita in the anthers being free instead of adherent. The bottle-gourd properly se-called, L. Vulgaris, is a climbing plant with downy, heart-shaped leaves and beautiful white flowers: the remarkable fruit first begins to grow in the form of an elongated cylinder, but gradually widens towards the ex tromity, until, when ripe, it resembles a flask with a narrow neck and large rounded bulb it sometimes attains a length of 7 feet. When ripe, the pulp is removed from the neck, and the interior cleared by leaving water standing in it; the woody rind that remains is used as a bottle: or the lower part is cut off and cleared out, forming a basin-like vessel applied to the same domestic purposes as the eala bash (crescentia) of the West Indies; the smaller varieties, divided length-wise, form spoons. The ripe fruit is apt to be bitter and cathartic, but while immature it is eaten by the Arabs and Turks. When about the size of a small cucumber, Lane says, it is stuffed with rice and minced meat, flavoured with pepper, and then boiled. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from The Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 11: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences and General Literature; Gou-Hip The bottle-gourds are now generally, placed in a separate genus, Lagenan'a, chieflyr differing from Cucurbita in the anthers being free instead of adherent. The bottle-gourd properly se-called, L. Vulgaris, is a climbing plant with downy, heart-shaped leaves and beautiful white flowers: the remarkable fruit first begins to grow in the form of an elongated cylinder, but gradually widens towards the ex tromity, until, when ripe, it resembles a flask with a narrow neck and large rounded bulb it sometimes attains a length of 7 feet. When ripe, the pulp is removed from the neck, and the interior cleared by leaving water standing in it; the woody rind that remains is used as a bottle: or the lower part is cut off and cleared out, forming a basin-like vessel applied to the same domestic purposes as the eala bash (crescentia) of the West Indies; the smaller varieties, divided length-wise, form spoons. The ripe fruit is apt to be bitter and cathartic, but while immature it is eaten by the Arabs and Turks. When about the size of a small cucumber, Lane says, it is stuffed with rice and minced meat, flavoured with pepper, and then boiled. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.