30 ODOEOGEAPHIA. 



only be played off occasionally. The adulteration of musk, oil of 

 cassia, &c., is a recognised Chinese monopoly, now so well-known 

 that those products, often adulterated to the extent of 50, 60 or 

 80%, are taken as merchantable commodities on the London market, 

 leaving risk of loss principally to consumers, who either do not 

 understand the methods of assay or trouble to apply them so long 

 as they obtain " cheap " goods or such as will bear a little further 

 adulteration if they have to be sold again in the crude state. 

 English dealers are not more immoral than the Heathens. 



The odour of nutmeg is observable in the leaves of Tcmus 

 moscJiata when bruised : — Temus moi^chata,^ a fine evergreen shrub 

 belonging to the Xatural Order Magnoliacece, ten feet in height, 

 native of Chili, in which country it is called Temo. In English it 

 is termed " Musk-scented Temus." The leaves are crowded on 

 the branches, alternate, oval, smooth, green and shining, 2 inches 

 long, stalked. The flowers are sweet-scented, calyx 3 -cleft ; petals 

 18, linear, flesh-coloured, narrow, 2 or 3 inches long. Stamens 26, 

 shorter than the petals ; anthers globose ; ovaries 2, each 

 terminated by a style ; carpels 2 ; seeds arillate. 



" Plume Nutmegs " See Atherosperma moschata. 



"Jamaica Nutmegs" or "American Nutmegs," sometimes 

 called " Calabash Xutmegs " from the resemblance of the entire 

 fruit to a small calabash, are the seeds of Monodora Myristica 

 Gcertner.f Formerly only a single species belonging to this genus 

 of Anonaceco was known, but four others have been found in 

 Western and Eastern tropical Africa. The original species, 

 J/. Myristica was described from specimens obtained from Jamaica, 

 where it was supposed to have been introduced from South 

 America, but there is more reason to believe it was taken there by 

 the negroes from Western Africa. Also the genus was formerly 

 regarded as anomalous among its congeners, on account of its 

 ovary being supposed to consist of a single carpel, with the 

 numerous ovules distributed over the whole of its inner surface 

 (and it is mis-named accordingly, from fjLovo^ one, and ^opa a skin); 

 but it is now known that it does not essentially differ from the 

 rest of the order, the ovary being in reality compound, consisting 



* Molina, Saggio sulla storia naturale del Chili, p. 153 ; Jussieu, Genera 

 plantarum, 435; JD.C. prodr 1, p. 78. 



t Fmct. ii. p. 194 t. 125 f. 1 ; Lunan, Hortus Jamaicensis p. 10 ; Dunal, 

 Monographie des Anonacees p. 80. 



