MUSTARD, Sinapis, a genus of plants of that natural order crneiftrir, having yellow flowers, and linear or oblong pods, which terminate in a sword-sht.p«1 sad •onipresscal or 4-cornered beak, and contain one row of seeds. The seeds arc globular, and their coty ledons (q.v.) conduplicate.—The most imiaortant species is BLACK .MUFTARD (S. :Nigro), an annual, which grows wild in fields and by waysides in the middle and south of Europe, and is not uncommon in the sonthern parts of Britain. Its pods are bluntly 4 angled, smooth, erect, and lie close to the stein, their valves I-nerved ; the leaves are smooth, the lower leaves lyrate, the upper have linear-lanceolate. The seeds are brown ish black.—WIIITE MUSTARD (S. alba), also a native of most parts of Europe, and of the southern parts of Britain, is an annual, having divergent pods coven d with stiff hairs, the valves 5-nerved, the seeds yellowish, the leaves pinnatifid.—Both these species tire cultiVated in England and elsewhere, for their seeds, which are ground into powder and mixed with water, to make the well-known condiment called marstai. The powder of the seeds is also much used in medicine as a rubefaeient. The use of mustard as a can diment is often found favorable to digestion. Mustard seeds deLerd for their pungency on a prineiplewhich, when water is added to black mustard, forms volatile oil of (See next article.) There is also in the seeds a bland fixed oil, oil which is obtained front them by expression, and constitutes about 28 per cent of their weight. The cake which remains after the oil is expressed is too acrid to be freely used for feeding cattle. It is black mustard which is chiefly cultf.vated, its seeds being more pungent and power ful than that of white mustitrd; but there is more difficulty in removing the skin of Ls seed than that of white mustard, which tat therefore often preferred, but more in England than on the continent of Europe. Must:aird requires a very rich soil. It is cultivated on the alluvial lands of the level eastern counties of England. Wisbea•h, in Cambridge shire, is the great mustard market of mustard is often sown in gnrrh 114 and forced in hot-houses, to be used in the seed-leaf as a small salad, having a pleasant pungency. It is also sometimes sown for feeding sheep, when turnip or rape has failed, being of very rapid growth, although inferior in quantity of crop.—WILD MusTarto,
or (S. anemic), which is distinguished by turgid and knotty pods with angles and longer than the two-edged beak, is a most troublesome annual weed in corn fields in Britain, often making them yellow with its flowers in the beginning of slimmer. Its seeds are said to have yielded the original Durham mustard., and are still gathered for mixing with those of the cultivated species. The bland oil of the seeds is used for lamps. —PEKIN MUSTARD (S. Pekineneis) is an annual, very extensively cultivated in China, its leaves being used as greens. It is quite hardy in the climate of Britain.—INDIAN 3Irs tram) (S. ramosa) is extensively cultivated in India for its seeds, which are used as a eon dhnent ; as are those of S. clichotoma and S. glauca, also cultivated in India. The oil of ,the seeds is much used throughout India for a different genus, bunias (q.v.)—The Mumma TREE of Scripture is Supposed to be saltadora Perzika, a small tree of the natural order salvadaracite, a small order allied to myninacets. It abounds in many parts of the east. The seed has no arcmatic pungency, and is used like mustard. The fruit is a berry with a pungent taste.
Ma voila ctuve. —The manufacture of mustard as it was originally used in this country, and as it still is on the continent, consisted in simply ga•iading the seed into a very flue meal. A false taste, however, arose for having an improved color, and the flour of mus tard was introduced, in which only the interior portion of the seed is used, the husk being separated, as the bran is from wheaten flour. This causes a great loss of flavor, as the pungent oil, on which the flavor chiefly depends, exists in greatest abundance in the husk,—Hence other materials, such as capsicum powder, and other very pungent matters, are added to bring up the flavor, and wheaten flour and other substances are added to increase the bulk andthe lightness of color. Indeeo, so many sophistications have been added that the mustard of the English tables can no longer be regarded in any other light than an elaborately compounded condiment, for which eachmanufacturer has his own particular recipe.