[2021] Fée remarks, that in this enumeration there is no method. Linnæus enumerates eleven principal flavours in the vegetable kingdom—dry or insipid, aqueous, viscous, salt, acrid, styptic, sweet, fat, bitter, acid, and nauseous; these terms, however seem, some of them, to be very indefinite.
[2022] It requires considerable discernment to appropriate nicely its English synonym to these four varieties of tastes, “acer, acutus, acerbus, and acidus,” more especially when we find that the “bitter” and the “rough” are occupied already by the “amarus” and the “austerus.”
[2023] In allusion, probably, to the pungency of the aroma or bouquet.
[2024] Lenitate.
[2025] This seems to be the meaning of “succus.”
[2026] The “insipid.”
[2027] This is so much the case, that the most nauseous medicine may be taken almost with impunity—so far as taste is concerned—by tightly pressing the nostrils while taking it.
[2028] Fée remarks that this is true of fire, and of distilled or perfectly pure water; but that physiologists are universally agreed that the air has its own peculiar smell.
[2029] All fruits that are rich in sugar and amidine, Fée says, either have, or acquire in time, a vinous flavour, by the development of a certain quantity of alcohol.
[2030] In the fruit with a fixed oil, this principle succeeds, when they are ripe, to the mucilaginous.