24 MR. D. HANBURY ON RADIX GALANGJE. 
The chief consumption, however, is not in England, but in Russia *. 
It is there used for a variety of purposes, as for flavouring the 
liqueur called aastoita. The drug is also employed by brewers, 
and to impart a pungent flavour to vinegar, a use noticed by 
Pomet t so long ago as 1694. As a popular medicine and spice, 
it is much sold in Livonia, Esthonia, and in Central Russia; 
and by the Tartars it is taken with tea. It is also in requisition 
in Russia as a cattle-medicine; and all over Europe there is à 
small consumption of it in regular medicine. 
There is doubtless some quantity of galangal of both sorts used 
in India. By a ‘Report on the External Commerce of the Presi- 
dency of Bombay for the year 1865-66’ I find that there was 
imported into the port of Bombay of *Gallingall" from China 
520 cwt., from Penang, Singapore, the Straits of Malacca, and 
Siam 70 ewt., and from ports in Malabar 834 ewt. Of the total 
quantity (1424 cwt.), 716 cwt. was reshipped to the Arabian and 
Persian Gulfs. 
According to Rondot, writing in 1848, the trade in this drug is 
on the decline +; and the statistics which I have examined tend 
strongly to show that this is the fact. 
The foregoing notes may be thus summarized :— 
l. Galangal was noticed by the Arab geographer Ibn Khur- 
dádbah in the ninth eentury as a production of the region which 
exports musk, camphor, and aloes-wood. 
2. It was used by the Arabians and later Greek physicians, 
and was known in northern Europe in the twelfth century. 
3. It was imported during the thirteenth century with other 
eastern spices by way of Aden, the Red Sea, and Egypt, to Akka, 
in Syria, whence it was carried to other ports of the Mediter- 
ranean. 
4. Two forms of the drug were notieed by Garcia d'Orta in 
for sale by Messrs. Lewis and Peat, 27 Oct., 1870. The quantity was not thought 
remarkable; and I am assured that a single buyer will sometimes purchase such 
a lot at one time for shipment to the continent. 
* Professor Regel, of St. Petersburg, and A. v. Bunge, of Dorpat, and Mr. 
Justus Eck, of London, have all obligingly supplied me with information as to 
the use of galangal in Russia. My thanks are also due to my friend Professor 
Flückiger, who on this, as on other occasions, has kindly offered me valuable 
suggestions. 
+ ‘Histoire des Drogues, Paris, 1694, fol., part 1, p. 64. 
1 ‘Commerce d'Exportation de la Chine,’ Paris, 1848, p. 98. 
