40,000 lbs. of mace were imported into the United Kingdom from India in 1848.

GINGER, GALANGALE, AND CARDAMOMS.

The rhizome of Zingiber officinale (Amomum Zingiber), constitutes the ginger of commerce, which is imported chiefly from the East and West Indies.  It is also grown in China.  In the young state the rhizomes are fleshy and slightly aromatic, and they are then used as preserves, or prepared in syrup; in a more advanced stage the aroma is fully developed, their texture is more woody, and they become fit for ordinary ginger.  The inferior sorts, when dried after immersion in hot water, form black ginger.  The best roots are scraped, washed, and simply dried in the sun with care, and then they receive the name of white ginger.  The rhizome contains an acid resin and volatile oil, starch and gum.  It is used medicinally as a tonic and carminative, in the form of powder, syrup, and tincture.

The root stocks of Alpinia racemosa, A.  Galanga, and many other plants of the order, have the same aromatic and pungent properties as ginger.

The consumption of ginger is about 13,000 or 14,000 cwt. a year.  Of 16,004 cwt. imported in 1840, 5,381 came from the British West Indies, 9,727 from the East India Company’s possessions and Ceylon, and 896 cwt. from Western Africa.

The difference between the black and white ginger of the shops is ascribed by Dr. P. Browne and others to different methods of curing the rhizomes; but this is scarcely sufficient to account for them, and I cannot help suspecting the existence of some difference in the plants themselves.  That this really exists is proved by the statements of Rumphius ("Herb.  Amb.,” lib. 8, cap. xix., p. 156), that there are two varieties of the plant, the white and the red.  Moreover Dr. Wright ("Lond.  Med.  Journal,” vol. viii.) says that two sorts are cultivated in Jamaica, viz., the white and the black; and, he adds, “black ginger has the most numerous and largest roots.”

The rhizome, called in commerce ginger root, occurs in flattish-branched or lobed palmate pieces, called races, which do not exceed four inches in length.  Several varieties, distinguished by their color and place of growth, are met with.  The finest is that brought from Jamaica.  A great part of that found in the shops has been washed in whiting and water, under the pretence of preserving it from insects.

The dark colored kinds are frequently bleached with chloride of lime.  Barbados ginger is in shorter flatter races, of a darker color, and covered with a corrugated epidermis.  African ginger is in smallish races, which have been partially scraped, and are pale colored.  East India ginger is unscraped; its races are dark ash colored externally, and are larger than those of the African ginger.  Tellichery ginger is in large plump races, with a remarkable reddish tint externally.