e for market.
As the fruit is brought in by the gatherers, the mace is carefully
removed, pressed together and flattened on a board, exposed to the sun
for three or four days, it is then dry enough to be put by in the
spice-house until required for exportation, when it is to be screwed
into boxes, and becomes the mace of commerce. The average proportion
of mace yielded in Singapore is one pound for every 433 nuts.

The nutmeg itself requires more care in its curing, it being necessary
to have it well and carefully dried ere the outer black shell be
broken. For this purpose the usual practice is to subject it for a
couple of months to the smoke of slow fires kept up underneath, whilst
the nuts are spread on a grating about eight or ten feet above. The
model of a perfect drying-house is easily to be obtained. Care should
be taken not to dry the nuts by too great a heat, as they shrivel and
lose their full and marketable appearance. It is therefore desirable
to keep the nuts, when first collected, for eight or ten days out of
the drying-house, exposing them at first for an hour or so to the
morning sun, and increasing the exposure daily until they shake in the
shell. The nuts ought never to be cracked until required for
exportation, or they will be attacked and destroyed by a small
weasel-like insect, the larvae of which is deposited in the ovule, and,
becoming the perfect insect, eats its way out, leaving the nut bored
through and through, and worth less as a marketable commodity. Liming
the nuts prevents this to a certain extent, but limed nuts are not
those best liked in the English market, whereas they are preferred in
that state in the United States. When the nuts are to be limed, it is
simply necessary to have them well rubbed over between the hands with
powdered lime. By the Dutch mode of preparation, they are steeped in a
mixture of lime and water for several weeks. This no doubt will
preserve them, but it must also have a prejudicial effect on the
flavor of the spice.

After the nuts are thoroughly dried, which requires from six weeks to
two months smoking, they cannot be too soon sent to market. But it is
otherwise with the mace; that commodity, when fresh, not being in
esteem in the London market, seeing that they desire it of a golden
color, which it only assumes after a few months, whereas at first when
fresh it is blood red; now red blades are looked upon with suspicion,
and are highly injurious to the sale