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 Avas, it is now scarcely 

 possible, I think, to determine, so imperfect are the notices of 

 it which they have left behind them. There is good reason to 

 suppose however, that the article bearing that name in their 

 Materia Medico, 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 Avhicb 

 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 figore of " Cardamomttm minus vulgare," 

 (lib. 1. 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 capside of the Malabar Cardamom, but, 

 the plant itself is represented with a simple, compact spike, and 

 seems to be no other than Amomiim compactum, (of Solander's 

 MSS.) or the Cardamom of Java*. In justice to Burmann, 



* Specimens and a sketch of this species (the latter made on the spot, when Sir 

 Joseph Banks was in the island of Java,) I have had opportunities of examining in the 

 Banksian library. 



however. 



