on the Malabar Cardamom, 251 
tions given by various authors, and to extricate from the unac- 
countable confusion, in which the botanical history of the Mala- 
bar Cardamom has been involved, such synonyms as ought to: 
accompany it in its future station in the Species Plantarum. 
What the Cardamom of the ancients was, it is now scarcely 
possible, I think, to determine, so imperfect are the notices of 
it which they have left bebind them. There is good reason to: 
suppose however, that the article bearing that name in their 
Materia Medica, was not the common Cardamom of our shops. 
Both Clusius and John Bauhin appear to have been convinced: 
of this, and to neither of these early authors, nor indeed to: 
Caspar Bauhin, are we to ascribe any of the inaccuracies that 
have found their way into later descriptions of this celebrated. 
aromatic; but the plant producing it was not satisfactorily made: 
known; until the publication of the Hortus Malabaricus, in which. 
the delineation of it is so striking that we cannot but wonder at. | 
all. perplexity, as to its prominent characters, not having been. 
then precluded. Yet Burmann, though he had probably seen a. 
specimen of the true Cardamom in Hermann’s herbarium, and. 
though he expressly asserts that the Ensal of the last-mentioned 
author agrees with Van Rheede’s figures of the Elettari, and with 
Clusius's description and figure of ** Cardamomum minus vulgare," 
(lib. I7 Aromat. c. 24.) makes a reference to. Bontius’s Java 
(p. 126) for the same species. Bontius, it is true, places by the 
side of his plant the capsule of the Malabar Cardamom, but, - 
the plant itself is represented with a simple, compact spike, and 
seems to be no other than Amomum compactum, (of Solander's. 
MS om the- Cardamom. "d aes In justice to Burmann,. 
* Soames id a gems of Qnem species = aem pem on ihe spot, when Sir 
Joseph Banks was in the island of Java,) I have had Opportunies e of ‚ezanuning| in the 
Banksian library. - a 
OWEVET, 
