RADIX GALANGZE MINORIS OF PHARMACOLOGISTS. 3 
dition to Haenan was planned; and on this occasion Mr. E. C. 
Taintor,an American gentleman in the service of the Imperial 
Customs, to whom I was indebted for the specimens of the Oaks 
on whieh the North Chinese wild silkworm is fed, respecting 
which I have already communicated a paper to the Society, ac- 
companied it. Mr. Sampson took great pains to indicate to 
Mr. Taintor the locality where the plant had been seen; and I 
am happy to say that Mr. Taintor's researches were crowned 
with complete success, he having brought back fine living plants 
with the rhizomes attached, an examination of which, and com- 
parison with authentic specimens of the drug from Mr. Hanbury 
and others, procured here, leave no doubt whatever of the species 
being the true officinal one. 
The following account from Mr. Taintor’s notes will explain 
how he obtained the plant. “The locality is about one mile 
north of the small village of Tung-sai, situated upon the Bay of 
Pak-shá, at the southern extremity of the peninsula of Lui-chau- 
fi, or Lei-chau-fü, and directly opposite Hoi-haú, the port of 
Kiung-chau-fü in Haenan. The plant was growing at an ele- 
vation of about 100 feet above the level of the sea, in a very dry 
hard red soil, evidently composed of disintegrated volcanic rock. 
The plant grew in masses, which had been originally planted and 
cultivated, but were now apparently neglected and running to 
waste. The roots were in dense masses of sometimes more than 
1 foot diameter, and with as many as twenty-five or thirty stalks 
springing from each. Rarely more than one or two of these 
stalks, however, bore flowers at the date of collection, January 
5th. My plan, to insure that I was getting the real plant, 
was to write the two characters Liang-kiang, R (mild 
or gentle ginger, the Chinese name), and tell an intelligent-look- 
ing villager that I wanted to see the flower. He led me, with- 
out the least hesitation, directly to the spot where I obtained the 
plants." F 
I must add that Mr. Swinhoe has since found the plant grow- 
ing wild in dense jungle on the south coast of Haenan, one 
of his specimens being now before me, and that he has informed 
Mr. Hanbury, as I quite recently learnt trom that gentleman, 
that there is good reason for believing that its fruit is the Bitter- 
seeded Cardamom, figured in Mr. Hanbury’s valuable paper * “ On 
some rare kinds of Cardamom.”’ 
* Pharm. Journ. xiv. 418, fig. 8. 
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