The natural size of a middling grain of this seed is about the eighth part of an inch long, and the ninth of an inch in diameter at the roundest part.
Cyminum.
Fig. 2. Cuminum C. Linn. Cummin. This seed is double, though fixed side by side to one little stem; both which while together seem like one, and are ribbed in an uneven manner longitudinally, having great numbers of little threads or fibres sticking out all over them, which makes them look hoary. They are thick in the middle and run to a cone at each end. At the upper extremity there is an appearance like a bifurcation in the stilus, each of them belonging to its particular seed; this appears when the seeds are separated.
These seeds are of a darkish straw-colour, the little threads or fibres being much lighter than the body of the seed. Each of these seeds contains in it a kernel of an olive-colour, and exactly in shape like a waterman’s boat, and of the same proportion, having a concave and convex side; the latter has a blunt ridge like the keel of a boat, and the former has a white line from one end to the other, which proves to be a ridge, to which the stilus that rises from the little stem of the seed, adheres to support it.
When the seeds are together upon the stem their length is about the fifth part of an inch, and about an eighth part of an inch in the broadest part.
Papaver Album.
Fig. 3. P. somniferum. Linn. Poppy. This is a little yellowish white seed exactly resembling in shape a sheep’s kidney, having a yellow place about the hollow part, which is its umbilicus, analogous to the hollow part of the kidney into which the blood-vessels (emulgents) enter.
If it be viewed on the back or convex part, concealing the hollow, it is exactly shaped like an egg, having one end somewhat rounder than the other.
All over its surface it has superficial cells, formed by ridges that rise from the surface, which are some heptagons, some pentagons, but for the most part hexagons, though not precisely of equal sides; and the bottoms of these cells seem to be very porous.
The seeds seem very light and springy, as a gentle blast of ones breath is capable of blowing them away, or a touch of any thing of making them roll a considerable way. As to their size, they are not above a twenty-fourth part of an inch long, and about a thirtieth part broad or thick.