CUMIN, or C UUMIN (Cuminum Cyminum)  , an annual herbaceous plant, a member of the natural order Umbelliferae and probably a native of some part of western Asia, but scarcely known at the present time in a wild state . It was early cultivated in Arabia, India and China, and in the countries bordering the Mediterranean . Its stem is slender and branching, and about a foot in height; the leaves are deeply cut, with filiform segments; the flowers are small and white . The fruits, the so-called seeds, which constitute the cumin of pharmacy, are fusiform or ovoid in shape and compressed laterally; they are two lines long, are hotter to the taste, lighter in colour, and larger than caraway seeds, and have on each half nine fine ridges, overlying as many oil-channels or vittae . Their strong aromatic smell and warm bitterish taste are due to the presence of about 3% of an essential oil . The tissue of the seeds contains a fatty oil, with resin, mucilage and gum, malates and albuminous matter; and in the pericarp there is much tannin . The volatile oil of cumin, which may be separated by distillation of the seed with water, is mainly a • mixture of cymol or cymene, C1oH14, and cumic aldehyde, C6H4(C3H7)COH . Cumin is mentioned in Isaiah xxviii . 25, 27, and Matthew xxiii . 23, and in the works of Hippocrates and Dioscorides . From Pliny we learn that the ancients took the ground seed medicinally with bread, water or wine, and that it was accounted the best of condiments as a remedy for squeamishness . It was found to occasion pallor of the face, whence the expression of Horace, exsangue cuminum (Epist. i .

19), and that of

Persius, pallentis gran cumini (Sat. v . 55) . Pliny relates the story that it was employed by the followers of Porcius Latro, the celebrated rhetorician, in order to produce a complexion such as bespeaks application to study (xx . 57) . In the middle ages cumin was one of the commonest spices of European growth . Its average price per pound in England in the 13th and 14th centuries was ad. or, at present value, about Is . 4d . (Rogers, Hist. of Agric. and Prices, i . 631) . It is stimulant and carminative, and is employed in the manufacture of curry powder . The medicinal use of the drug is now confined to veterinary practice . Cumin is exported from India, Mogador, Malta and Sicily .