548 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



out of season, and imperfectly dried in stove-ovens. Even in this 

 state it brought twenty-five livres per pound. In 1752 ginseng 

 of this character to the value of five hundred thousand livres was 

 exported. In 1754 the value of the export had fallen to thirty- 

 three thousand livres. A quantity sent to La Rochelle remained 

 unsold, but finally found its way to China, where its inferior 

 quality gave the Canadian article a bad reputation ; the demand 

 fell off, and the export ceased. When the trade was at its height 

 it was considered more profitable to gather ginseng than to culti- 

 vate the farm, and agriculture was almost entirely neglected. 

 The result was, that the plant almost entirely disappeared. It 

 came to be a proverb among the people, when speaking of some 

 matter that had failed, " C'est tombe* comme le ginseng." * 



The revival of the trade has caused great activity in the search 

 for the plant throughout the country back of Kingston, where it 

 is said to abound. The profits on it are stated to be four hundred 

 per cent, and one druggist there cleared three thousand dollars in 

 one deal. The average wholesale price is one dollar per pound, 

 the retail price five dollars. If the trade is to be preserved, care 

 will have to be taken to prepare the root properly and not dig it 

 up indiscriminately, as the root does not reach any great size in 

 one season, but takes years to develop. In the desire to partici- 

 pate in the profits of the trade, some curious mistakes have been 

 made. One man, who thought he had a rich find in Manitoba, dis- 

 covered, after buying several tons, that he had not the right arti- 

 cle. Many have confused gentian with ginseng, and, on testing 

 the root of the former, have wondered why the Chinese were so 

 fond of the latter. 



The Chinese word gen-seng, and the Iroquois word garent-oquen, 

 the Indian name of the plant, both mean " a man's thigh," and 

 have doubtless been applied because of a supposed resemblance of 

 the root to that part of the human body. This coincidence Pere 

 Lafitan could not consider fortuitous, and upon it he based an argu- 

 ment that America had once been joined to Asia, and that the In- 

 dian population of the former had originally come from the latter 

 before the continents were severed at Bering Strait. The accompa- 

 nying figure gives a general idea of the appearance of the plant. 



Experiments were made last year by Signor Tacchini, at Borne, on the influ- 

 ence of passing wagons, etc., on the seisin ological instruments in the tower of the 

 college, forty metres above the level of the city. The oscillations produced by 

 the marching of a regiment of soldiers, 150 metres away, were registered by the 

 apparatus. The result both shows the sensitiveness of the instruments and illus- 

 trates the necessity of placing geodynamic observatories as far as possible from 

 any disturbing agencies. 



* It has gone down like ginseng. 



