until the growth is established. The best time for sowing is in 

 the beginning of the warm season, just before the rains are ex- 

 pected. Under favourable conditions the seeds germinate in 1» to 

 21 days. For quick results, and also on account of the difficulty 

 of obtaining reliable seed, the planting of "roots" is recom- 

 mended, particularly when a mixed pasture is being formed. At 

 Wollongbar the « roots " are planted 4 or 5 feet apart, each way, 

 and tL e ordinary grass or clover seeds are afterwards sown in their 

 proper seasons. 



Sets for planting can be obtained from the Wollongbar Experi- 

 mental Farm, Richmond River, New South Wales ; seeds are 

 supplied by Messrs. Law, Somner & Co., 139-14:1, Swanston Street, 

 Melbourne. 



II.-GINSENG IN CHINA. 



{Aralia qn mqucfoh'a.) 

 Aralia quinquefolia grows in Japan, Corea, and Manchuria, 

 also in Saghalien, in the mountains of China from north to south, 

 in the Himalaya, and in a part of North America which comprises 

 the East of Canada and the Temperate and Eastern United States. 

 In this extensive area can be recognised a number of varieties 

 differing in the leaves and rhizome, or in the length of the 

 peduncle ; and it would seem that they differ also in medicinal 

 properties. 



China is almost the only market for the drug. There, where 

 medicine works hand in hand with the occult sciences, where the 

 efficacy of the stuff commonly sold to heal is not inquired into. 

 Ginseng, discarded after trial in Europe and America, remains the 

 panacea for almost all ills. 



American Ginseng is grown for export to China. It was the 

 subject of a notice in an earlier issue {K. B., 1893, p. 71), and an 

 excellent account of it by G. Y. Nash, is published as Bulletin 

 No. 16 by the United States Department of Agriculture, Division 

 of Botany. We shall not concern ourselves with it except in its 

 relation to China. 



A mature plant of Ginseng consists of a stem 1-2 feet high, 

 bearing at the top an umbel of inconspicuous greenish-yellow 

 ftowers, and towards or above the middle a whorl of four or five 

 compound leaves. The leaflets are 5-7 in number and are lanceo- 

 late or lanceolate-obovate or obovate, rather regularly serrate, 

 acuminate, and with white bristles sparsely scattered along the 



The stem which bears the leaves and flowers is renewed every 

 year from an underground rhizome, to which in some forms 

 (probably in all at one period of the life of the plant) is attached 

 a fleshy root. In the American and Manchurian varieties the 

 root is large and the rhizome generally very small, but in others 

 the rhizome is large and fleshy. Both rhizome and root afford 

 "— ' — --^"1 Ginseng. 



may give place to a fresh one ; it may branch, or may giv 



